Posted on February 27, 2011 by Benjamin David Steele
Here is something that has been quoted many times before, but it deserves being quoted many times more.
First They came… – Pastor Martin Niemöller
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
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If only people understood those words, we wouldn’t have all these problems that continue to plague us.
People look around the world and think other people’s problems aren’t their problems. Who cares about the poor who are exploited and oppressed in other countries? Who cares about the working class and the unions? Most people see those who are different as the enemy. To business owners, the workers are the enemy. To non-union workers, union workers are the enemy. To well off whites, poor minorities are the enemy. To poor Americans, immigrants are the enemy. To fundamentalists, social gospel Christians are the enemy. Et Cetera. And history just keeps on repeating.
I was reminded of what Niemhöller wrote because of the recent attacks on unions by Republicans and corporations. Unions have been greatly disempowered since the Taft-Hartley Act and since the Reagan administration, but still even in weakened form they are the only defense the working and middle classes have left in fighting against the ever growing corporatism in America. Of the top 10 campaign contributors, all are corporate PACs besides 3 which are unions. With the unjust elimination of ACORN, the poor and working class need the unions more than ever. Organizations like unions and the former ACORN help inform the public about important issues and help to encourage the poor get to the voting booths.
There is one very important thing to note from the Niemöller quote. The Nazis didn’t go after Jews right from the start. No, they first went after the Communists and unions. The Nazis had to first eliminate the groups that represent average people, the groups that are the pillars of grassroots democracy. Once they are eliminated, any other group can be freely attacked without the possibility of organized resistance. Just look at Wisconsin right now. Besides unions, there is no other group that could organize average Americans to such an extent. Unions are the very last defense. Unions don’t just defend their own workers. Unions, in defending the working class, defend the rights of all.
I was recently reminded of a fact most people don’t know. Check out these maps:
Many states (such as in the South) that people think of as solidly Republican in reality aren’t that solid at all. In conservative states, a divide exists that doesn’t isn’t found in liberal states. Poor people in conservative states tend to vote Democratic whereas the rich tend to vote Republican (however, both the poor and the rich in liberal states tend to vote Democratic). So, how do Republicans maintain control of states that have populations mixed between the two parties? It’s rather simple. The rich Republicans control the politics, control the media, control the corporate contributions. The organizations that represent the poor are few and getting fewer.
This actually underestimates the case, because unions are more than half of the Democratic ground game. It’s not just that union members vote Democratic – it’s that union members work for Democratic candidates and against Republican ones. They knock on doors, they organize, they phone pool. Any decent union has a hardened corps of organizers from their day to day work, and around election time those guys fan out. They are tough, experienced, don’t fear rejection and are mostly solidly working class.
If you look at a map of the US by union membership, like the one above, what you’ll see is that it looks awfully familiar – where unions are strong, Dems win. Where they aren’t, they lose or struggle.
The South, in particular, has a long history of disenfranchising the poor and the minorities (both of whom vote Democratic, of course). Most Americans don’t vote because most Americans feel disenfranchised from the entire political process. This perception is partly true and partly false, but the corporate media wants people to believe it because the continued dominance of the rich is dependent on this perception. If this perception of disenfranchisement falters even for a moment, protests and revolutions (or, at least, political upsets) can happen.
I’ve often heard conservatives (including democratically elected politicians) criticize democracy calling it mobocracy (two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner). Let me break down this criticism. So, who is this ‘mob’? It’s the masses, the general public, the average American, the majority of adults who feel so disenfranchised that they don’t vote. Conservatives are afraid of the majority because they know the majority doesn’t support their views and policies (see: US Demographics & Increasing Progressivism). Conservatives are afraid of grassroots democracy like unions because they know grassroots democracy won’t benefit corporations.
One argument conservatives give is that unions have already served their purpose. Conservatives will initially try to deny what unions have accomplished, but when that fails they’ll argue that there is nothing left for unions to accomplish. However, from my liberal perspective, unions are the only thing stopping our society from returning to 19th century capitalism. So, what exactly was 19th century capitalism like? There are some positive examples like the Shakers (which is a socialist model of capitalism that conservatives don’t like) and there are many negative examples like the following (from my post Anarcho-Capitalism & Stateless Society):
Each mining camp was a feudal dominion, with the company acting as lord and master. Every camp had a marshal, a law enforcement officer paid by the company. The ‘laws’ were the company’s rules. Curfews were imposed, ‘suspicious’ strangers were not allowed to visit the homes, the company store had a monopoly on goods sold in the camp.
The doctor was a company doctor, the schoolteachers hired by the company . . . Political power in Colorado rested in the hands of those who held economic power. This meant that the authority of Colorado Fuel & Iron and other mine operators was virtually supreme . . . Company officials were appointed as election judges. Company-dominated coroners and judges prevented injured employees from collecting damages.
[The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-14, pp. 9-11]
I personally don’t want to return to a society where such capitalist systems existed. I’m fairly sure most Americans wouldn’t want to return to this either. And it’s good to keep in mind that this kind of capitalism (or similar variations) still exists in other parts of the world where unions don’t exist or don’t have as much political influence. So, I think it would be unwise to dismiss the role unions play in our society. Our grandparents and great grandparents fought and died for the rights we take for granted.
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Ignoring history (which is never a wise thing to do), what can we say about unions in our present society? For example, does allowing teachers unions to have collective bargaining lead to negative impact on the public education system?
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Anyway, how much power do unions actually have? A picture is worth a thousand words. Totals by Sector from OpenSecrets.org:
If money talks, politicians are listening to louder voices than unions.
Even so, unions are more likely to get heard by Democrats.
Elliott Management (a Hedge fund company)
Koch Industries (note: the billioaire who is the main financier of the Teabaggers)
Every Republican is Crucial PAC
Associated Builders & Contractors
(so-called) “Freedom” Project (a Republican PAC)
NOTES: Top Republican supporters are billionaires, contractors, and hedge funds…and keep in mind this applies to the Teabagger movement as well. They are supported by the same billionaires, contractors, and hedge funds.
Top Overall Donors to Democrats:
ActBlue (composite of many, many small, grassroots donations)
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Laborers Union
Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union
EMILY’s List (composite of many, many small grassroots donations)
Plumbers/Pipefitters Union
National Assn of Letter Carriers
Ironworkers Union
United Auto Workers
United Transportation Union
American Postal Workers Union
UNITE HERE
AmeriPAC: The Fund for a Greater America
NOTES: Top Democratic supporters are unions and grassroots donors.
Seems to me the contrast is really quite sharp: Billionaires vs. working and middle class.
Where unions are strong, do they make a society better or worse? Here is from a post I wrote comparing the US and Germany:
In this video, there was one particular point about Germany that stood out. Germany is 1/5 the size of the US and yet has the second highest trade surplus in the world (after China). They’ve accomplished this while having higher rate of unionization and higher pay. Interestingly, the US economy was also doing better when unionization and pay was higher in the US.
Unions in the US are considered socialists even though they represent the working class. In Germany, it’s required for worker representation to be half of board members of companies. In Germany, the industrial and financial sectors are highly regulated keeping jobs from being outsourced and ensuring main street benefits rather than just wall street. According to conservative ideology, this kind of socialist practices and union power should destroy the economy and destroy innovation and yet the complete opposite is the result.
This seems to support Noam Chomsky’s arguments. Chomsky thinks the world would be a better place if workers had more power to influence the companies they work for and influence the economy they are a part of. As a socialist liberal, Chomsky genuinely believes it’s good to empower the average person. It would appear Germany has done exactly this and has become immensely successful by doing so.
A major factor I discussed in that US and Germany post was about income inequality. Here is a graph showing both the data of union coverage and inequality:
In particular, unions tend to systematically reduce wage inequality among men, but have little impact on wage inequality for women. We conclude that unionization helps explain a sizable share of cross-country differences in male wage inequality among the three countries. We also conclude that de-unionization explains a substantial part of the growth in male wage inequality in the U.K. and the U.S. since the early 1980s.
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I just responded to some comments from one of my previous blog posts (Liberal Trust vs Conservative Mistrust) which touch upon a central issue in American politics. Here are my two responses:
I agree with you about the misleading notions of American “conservatives”. It would make life easier if they used a different term to label themselves. Looking at the history of Western conservatism, American conservatives don’t seem all that conservative. In Britain, the conservatives are the Tories. In early America, Tories defended Britain against the radical revolutionaries. I find it odd that American conservatives worship the founders who were radicals. Thomas Paine inspired the entire revolution and his writings were as liberal as they get.
I was reading Henry Fairlie’s view on Toryism. I realized that traditional conservatism more closely describes Democrats than Republicans. Democrats are the ones interested in conserving our present system. On the other hand, Republicans attack our present system. And, as you note, their fantasies about the past are actually radical visions that would entirely remake American society. They don’t want to conserve anything. If American conservatives actually wanted to conserve the past, they’d first have to read something other than revisionist history.
My suspicion is that the idiosyncrasy of American conservatism makes a bit more sense when taking into consideration the psychological research done on ideologies. Brain scans show that conservatives tend to have a larger part of the brain that deals with fear. Other research shows that conservatives have a stronger disgust response toward anything unusual or improper (such as rotting fruit).
America is unusual in that the status quo of our society isn’t the power of a particular church or of a royal lineage or of a specific ethnicity. The only status quo we have in this country is that of change. Ever since the first Europeans came here, it has been endless change. At a fundamental level, conservatives hate change and so American conservatives hate the status quo of the society they were raised in. They would like to create a status quo that never changes which, oddly, would require radically changing the present status quo. Conservatives seem like hypocrites because they are conflicted by their own psychological predispositions. In the US, they can’t win for losing. The country was founded on a radical liberal vision and has continued to radically change ever since. To be an American conservative is to hate the founding status quo of America.
(note: I admit ‘hate’ is a strong word. Let us just say conservatives are strongly conflicted by the founding status quo of America.)
I’ve just started a book titled Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye. It’s very fascinating. It’s odd that I don’t recall having learned much about Paine in my public education or even in various documentaries I’ve watched about early America.
There seems to be a love/hate relationship with Paine. His writings were what inspired the American Revolution and probably what kept it from failing, but his vision was so radically democratic that he fell out of favor with many of the others in the founding generation who just wanted to create a new ruling elite (which essentially is what they did).
It’s very interesting that this radical vision is at the heart of what defines America. Paine wanted to end slavery, wanted Native Americans to keep their land, wanted women, blacks, and the poor to have as much power as rich white men. He wanted America to become an example of genuine freedom that would inspire revolution all over the world. Paine was a bad ass. His vision is radical even by today’s standards.
America would not exist without Paine’s far left democratic vision. He inspired the revolution, inspired people to keep fighting, inspired people to support the fight for independence in all ways. The American people, especially the lower classes, were fighting for Paine’s vision of America. Paine dedicated his whole life to the cause of liberty. He never made any profit from any of his writings. He risked his life many times and even fought hand-to-hand combat. He was a hardcore revolutionary. He didn’t grow up with privilege. Unlike the most of the Founding Fathers, he was born working class and was an immigrant. Paine believed in the American Dream before there was a country called America.
Paine is the reason conservatives are endlessly outraged in America. Like many in the founding generation, conservatives are scared shitless about the vision that Paine proposed and that vision still exists as a seed waiting to sprout. Paine failed because the rich white males of the time were too afraid to embrace a truly free society. The Populists in the late 19th century attempted again to achieve that vision, but once again the ruling elite coopted the revolutionary energy for the purposes of the corporate elite. Now, we once again face the potential of Paine’s vision. People once again begin to remember what inspired the founding of this country in the first place. Those in power and those on the right will do everything they can to squash democracy. Everyone understands that democracy is the most dangerous vision that any human has ever conceived.
Maybe you’re right about liberals tending to focus on freedom from. When considering radical freedom, we can only know the past from which we are trying to free ourselves from. We can’t know where radical freedom will lead. It’s an experiment. Paine explicitly thought of America as an experiment. If you want safety and security, then you can’t have freedom. That is the hypocrisy of what America has become. Paine realized that even the ruling elite could only have as much freedom as everyone was allowed. Paine knew that the only way to have democracy was to have an educated public and the ruling elite knew the only way to control the masses was to keep them ignorant. But control can never lead to freedom.
Even the data proves this. In societies with high economic inequality, there are more social problems (see: ‘Capitalist’ US vs ‘Socialist’ Germany). The rich may be relatively better off than the poor in such a society, but the rich in such a society are relatively worse off than the rich in a society that has more equality. The rich people in an unequal society have, for example, more health problems (probably from the stress of living surrounded by poverty, crime, and social conflict).
Paine understood this centuries ago. The ruling elite at the time dismissed his radical vision. And the ruling elite today continue to dismiss his radical vision. Yet his radical vision remains. The potential of America continues to be wasted because of those who have power don’t have vision and those who have vision don’t have power. Paine began the revolution and the revolution is still happening. The reason America has never stopped changing is because a large segment of American society has always refused to give up on the vision Paine first described.
Many might consider Paine to have been naive for actually believing in freedom. But dammit I wish there were more idealists. The only thing that makes ideals unrealistic is the cynical ruling elite that always stands in the way. Why is democracy considered naive? Why is freedom seen as a threat?
To this day, the conservatives still fear the masses of the poor and minorities. If you look at the demographics of the Southern states, they actually aren’t solidly Republican by a long stretch. If all the poor and minorities voted, Democrats would win by a landslide in the South and all across the coutnry. Conservatives know this and that is why they do what they can to destroy organizations like Acorn and unions that represent the poor and disenfranchised. Most Americans don’t vote because the entire history of America has been about the ruling elite disenfranchising the masses. Even when they do vote, their votes might simply not be counted as happened in Florida. It’s fucked up.
If Paine was here, he’d start a new revolution. Paine was a Marxist revolutionary before there was a Marx. He realized that the fundamental issue is always class war. It was so when immigrants first came to America, many of whom were political dissidents, oppressed poor people, and indentured servants. And it’s still true.
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Let me finish by pointing out a couple of things related to those comments.
First, here is a passage from the book I mentioned above (Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye, Kindle location 1129):
“in all countries where the freedom of the poor has been taken away, in whole or in part, that the freedom of the rich lost its defence,” he insisted that “freedom must have all or none, and she must have them equally.” Paine was not naïve. He knew freedom could be dangerous, but he pointed out that “if dangerous in the hands of the poor from ignorance, it is at least equally dangerous in the hands of the rich from influence.” Dismissing neither possibility, he suggested ways of addressing them. To prevent ignorance he recommended education. And to prevent political corruption he again demanded democracy: “numerous electors, composed as they naturally will be, of men of all conditions, from rich to poor.”
When people fear mobocracy, what exactly do they fear? Is it fear of the possibility of radical freedom that democracy envisions? Or is it fear that one’s vested interests would be undermined if everyone had equal education and equal opportunity? It’s true that ignorant masses are easier control, but a society can’t simultaneously serve both the realpolitik of control and the ideal of freedom. More importantly, Paine understood that to try to control others meant endangering one’s own freedom. A person can only have what they are willing to offer to others.
Second, the comments above (right before the quote from Kaye’s book) are from a blog post of mine (Liberal Trust vs Conservative Mistrust) that touches upon this same issue of fear and mistrust of democracy. My point in that post is that this conservative response is based on an attitude of not having faith in the average American and not having faith in the strength of democracy. As such, conservatives don’t have faith in the fundamental vision of the American experiment. Here is how I ended that post (and with it I’ll also end this post):
The unions did manage to win in certain ways, but the liberal vision of the working class was integrated into the Federal government. Eventually, the Democrats became the party for unions and for the poor. This altered the dynamic causing the class wars to be less clear, especially as class has been mixed up with race and culture. The Democratic party has done some good things for the working class and so that is why the poor working class is loyal to the Democrats to this very day. The vision of Democrats is that the average person can actually be served by his representatives in Washington. The vision of liberalism is that democracy is strong and not easily destroyed.
Conservatives are less confident. They see democracy as constantly threatened and that is why they are much more partisan in their support of big government. It’s also why conservatives support big military despite claiming to be against big government. Conservatives live in fear of democracy being destroyed. Enemies are everywhere. The enemy threatens both from outside (Russia, Islamic terrorists) and from within (Communist witchhunts, social programs, gun rights). Conservatives don’t trust any governments. They only trust our own state government to the extent it might protect us from foreign state governments, but idealy they’d love to live in a world where state governments didn’t exist at all or else had very little power which means they wish they lived in early America.
It is fascinating to me to have “The Naked Communist” resurface, even as a second work of fiction by a newly rediscovered author. When I was in high school (1960 to 1963) I listened to a series of radio lectures by (apparently) W. Cleon Skousen which culminated in a pitch for his book, The Naked Communist, which was going to expose the evil plans of the terrifying international communist conspiracy. I bought the book and read it and found myself nagged by one question that stayed with me for years. The core presumption of Soviet communism was that people would work hard for the well-being of the state, even with no personal payoff. That always seemed unlikely to me–in fact so unlikely that I always believed that Soviet communism was destined to fall of its own weight. The communist conspiracies were inconsequential because the system was certain to fail. I was then struck by the odd perception that the people most paranoid about the rise of this doomed ideology were the conservatives who should have been the most confident of the ultimate success of the American economic experiment. They were instead the least confident and the most fearful of being overwhelmed by the Soviet system.
When communism fell at last I was not surprised because it seemed to me always destined to fall. Why was my liberal mind more confident of our system than the conservatives that constantly pronounced us doomed to fall to the evil Soviets?
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Conservatives don’t seem to have much faith in the American people or the American experiment. I understand having doubts and I even understand being pessimistic. But, faith or not, do conservatives care more about their ideology or about real people? I know many conservatives do actually care. So, why do they keep voting for Republican politicians who again and again implement policies that hurt average Americans? What is to be gained by attacking unions that protect the working class, social services that help the needy, and public schools that educate the next generation?
Posted on February 10, 2011 by Benjamin David Steele
I comment on a lot of videos, but I feel particularly compelled to comment when someone states something that is misinformed, is illogical, is a bad example, et cetera. That was the case yesterday when I responded to a video by MrHerrIQ (Why Leftists do not debate rightwingers even when they attempt to?).
He seems like he might have the capacity for making a good argument, but he wasn’t making one in this video (to be fair, he does admit that he is ranting). I pointed out some problems with his argument. For example, he said that leftists just repeat themselves (which he bases on his claim of having debated a thousand leftists and having won all of these debates in recent years). I pointed out my own experience that, yes, I do often repeat myself in arguments with rightwingers (I’m not talking about the average conservative) because it often seems they don’t understand or acknowledge anything only stated once. I also pointed out that the data shows that liberals (the same as his ‘leftist’?) are the most educated demographic and that most scientists identify as liberals… by which I was implying that there might be an intellectual inequality between liberals and rightwingers which might explain communication difficulties.
By the way, if I sound condescending, please realize I’m responding to a video that was condescending to all leftists. Take note that I usually don’t generalize about all conservatives. Instead, I try to speak about specific demographics such as ‘rightwingers’ (to be more specific, US ‘rightwingers’)… which I often define in the context of the psychological research about Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWAs) or, in other contexts, as the far right which in the US population usually means the social conservatives and fundamentalists (anyway, the research shows a correlation in the US population between RWAs and social conservatives), although the label ‘rightwingers’ can sometimes be used to more loosely apply to the radical right such as anarcho-capitalists, objectivists, and militant libertarians (these latter groups often don’t identify as conservatives). However, it would appear MrHerrIQ is using the ‘rightwinger’ more generally to refer to all right-leaning people (in all countries?) which isn’t how it’s typically used in the US. Also, his use of ‘leftist’ leaves me uncertain since to me that implies someone on the far left. So, I don’t know if he means all people who lean left or if he means the far left (Communists? Marxists? Anarchists?). My sense is he means the former because he is speaking very generally, but some of his comments could be interpreted as specifically referring to just social liberals (which isn’t how I would define ‘leftist’). I think in one of his videos he mentioned English isn’t his first language and so maybe he doesn’t understand the US context for these words… which might explain some of his frustration considering the YouTube viewership is a largely American audience.
Another commenter pointed out an even more obvious flaw to the argument: It was just a straw man from start to finish, although it’s hard to know if he was making a straw man argument as I’m not sure exactly that he was presenting a false argument or just a false portrayal (he seemed to conflate his idea of a liberal with his perception of the behavior and arguments of liberals; and, so, his dismissive portrayal of how liberals supposedly argue was seemingly being presented as a disproving of the argument of liberalism in general)… to put it simply, I was confused by what he was even trying to communicate. He presented his argument using only his personal experience which he didn’t even go into detail about… and then using these vague references he made a generalized portrayal of all leftists (Are these self-identified ‘leftists’ or his he assuming to know who is and isn’t a ‘leftist’?). To put it in simpler terms, his argument was that leftists suck at argument because he doesn’t like leftists and they’re stupid losers.
If the straw man fallacy doesn’t apply, there are potentially many other fallacies that could be applied to various aspects of the presentation of his argument (as well to my interaction with him in comments and private messages): appeal to ridicule, fallacy of distribution, psychologist’s fallacy, reification fallacy, accident fallacy, cherry picking, fallacy of composition, hasty generalization, association fallacy, sampling bias, ad hominem, appeal to emotion, weasel words, poisoning the well, et cetera. I don’t know. It would be difficult trying to analyze in detail (sentence by sentence) the precise logic or lack thereof within his argument… and I don’t feel that motivated.
He is free to have his opinion, but I was hoping he would expand on his argument using more objective evidence (and, of course, a more clear presentation). In particular, a simple definition of terms would’ve been helpful along with maybe some demographic data to clarify exactly the group of people he is talking about (I’m assuming the demographic labeled as ‘leftist’ would be different depending on the cultural context of different regions of the world… and I don’t know the country this guy lives in or what his personal experience has been with so-called ‘leftists’).
I was wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. I realized he might only be referring to leftists from his own country, although he seemed to be generalizing about some hypothetical ‘leftist’ that exists beyond any specific context (which I might accept if he was speaking about liberals in more psychological terms in reference to scientific research). I’m fairly sure that what he thinks of as ‘leftist’ isn’t how most US liberals think of themselves. So, I was prepared to have a debate about possible cultural differences of how we perceive labels and how we interact with those who are different.
Alas, that wasn’t to happen. I noticed today he had left a response to me:
@MarmaladeINFP
“I don’t exactly follow the argument being made,”
1)This is my experience with leftists in debates, 2) What is yours? 3) Why do you think this is?
“I know that the research shows that liberals are on average higher IQ and higher educated.”
Since the 1960′s cultural-revolution, education has gotten liberal so this could be a chicken and the egg scenario with a-political high IQ individual being influenced by leftists. However if high IQ select against itself, it lacking in value.
So, I clicked on the link to the comments page. He had removed all of my comments along with all of the comments of those who disagreed with him. I just had to laugh. I hadn’t seen such blatant hypocrisy in a long while. He was making an argument about why leftists don’t debate rightwingers. And, when leftists try to debate him, he removes their comments. I wonder if he has enough self-awareness to even realize the hypocrisy of this.
After laughing, it did make me feel a bit sad. He obviously is frustrated about not being able to communicate to those who are different than him. But, because of this frustration, he has given up trying to communicate those who are different than him. So, he has resigned to find comfort in his preferred reality tunnel and block out all the voices that disturb him.
If he just seemed mean-spirited or uneducated, I could dismiss him. But he seems intelligent. I always find it sad when I meet someone (even a stranger) with potential for intelligence who is afraid of intelligent debate. I’m not sure why it makes me sad, but it does. Maybe it’s just a matter of seeing yet another example of wasted human potential. We humans have so much potential and yet look at the world we collectively create with all of its conflict and suffering.
I’m included in this. I too waste potential. I wish I was a better person. I wish I knew how to debate rightwingers, how to communicate to communicate well to people in general. But I fail at this as most people fail.
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I would share my comments to him on his video, but he deleted them. In order to add some more context, here is a message he sent me:
Put yourself in my situation.
I’ve debated a thousend leftists and the last 300 has not impressed me enough for me to find that it’s a netgain for me. If you want to debate me, you have to somehow ensure to me, you’re legitt.
You wont lose your face, your facade wont break.
You will be honest and admitt your shortcommings.
You will not repeat youself and reconstruct your argument.
You will abide by the rules of logic.
No red herrings.
You will not be passive aggressive, sarcism could be argued to be appealing to ridicule and it’s just mere autosuggestion at most.
Make your own points, I shouldn’t have to dragg them out of you or ask of you what assumptions you are basing your argument on.
If you can do this, I will have a yellow card, red card system. I tolerate 1, possibly 2 fuck ups. Nothing more. I used to but not anymore.
What is it that you would like to argue about?
Leave a PM on youtube and I will get into contact with you when Im available.
Perhaps you’re the one, who knows.
From where Im standing I doubt it, but if the shoe was on the other foot, you wouldn’t blame me.
My response:
You’ve debated many people. So what? I’ve debated many people. Many people all over the web have debated many other people. It happens all the time. You aren’t special.
I have to ensure you? (By the way, you probably mean ‘assure’. I think I heard you say that English isn’t your first language.) Why don’t you assure me? You are the one who deleted my comments. I didn’t delete your comments. As an outside observer, your actions look like hypocrisy. But you claim you aren’t a hypocrite. Why should I trust your words when your actions imply otherwise? How do you accidentally delete that many comments (something like 10 or 20 of them)? It doesn’t seem possible. So, unless you can explain that to me I don’t feel assured.
Yet, your tone here is that of condescension. You will condescend to allow me to debate you if I follow your rules. So, should I condescend to overlook your apparent act of hypocrisy?
Anyway, your rules seem to only serve the purpose of your trying to avoid debate. Why are you afraid of open and fair discussion?
For example, one of your rules is: “You will not repeat youself and reconstruct your argument.” This would be a difficult rule to follow. English isn’t your first language. So, there might be many miscommunications. Also, does it count as repeating if I state again comments you’ve deleted?
Another example of one of your rules is: “You will not be passive aggressive, sarcism could be argued to be appealing to ridicule and it’s just mere autosuggestion at most.” This is purely subjective. Do you have to prove I’m being passive aggressive or sarcastic? Or is it merely your personal perception? Why do I have to conform my behavior to your subjective biases? Also, once again, what about miscommunications? I assume you come from a different culture than I do. How am I supposed to know what is considered passive aggressive or sarcastic in your culture?
And yet another example is your last rule: “Make your own points, I shouldn’t have to dragg them out of you or ask of you what assumptions you are basing your argument on.” This rule is utter nonsense. Every single comment any person makes has an infinite number of assumptions it’s based on. This also comes back to the issue of culture and language. How am I supposed to know what assumptions you care about or what assumptions you are or aren’t aware of? Do you hold yourself to this same standard? How am I supposed to know all the assumptions you are holding in the context of all your rules?
All in all, your rules are unrealistic and unfair expectations. I suspect that is their purpose. No one could follow all those rules. Or, rather, one could only follow all those rules to your satisfaction if they happened to share all your assumptions, all your values, all your beliefs, and all your cultural biases. Have you considered that this might be at the bottom of your frustration with interacting with those who are different from you? You seem to want others to conform to your expectations and your worldview. Have you considered that it might be more fruitful if you were willing to meet people in the middle, willing to compromise, willing to understand new perspectives?
I have no doubt that, from where you’re standing, you doubt it. You’re frustrated because you’ve set yourself up for frustration. And then you blame others for your frustration. It seems like a no-win situation. From where I’m standing, I have plenty of doubts about both your actions and your words. I don’t know you and so I don’t really care who is to blame. I’m not blaming you for anything, but you do seem to be blaming others. Why do you keep telling me to see things from your perspective? Why don’t you try to see things from the perspective of others? If you actually understood the liberal view, you wouldn’t be blaming liberals. So, why are you blaming liberals for your lack of understanding of the liberal view?
I’m being honest with you here. I’m not attacking you. I’m just calling them as I see them. I’d love to try to have a fair and rational discussion with you (I’ve never liked to ‘debate’ per se), but you’ve so far given me no assurance that you’re even interested in trying. All your comments seems to show that you see everything in terms of being about you. That isn’t a helpful attitude. Even so, if you’re willing to seek a middle ground of understanding, I’m all game. But if you just want a battle of egos, a pissing match, a game of rhetoric, then no thanks.
On a side note, I suspect your real frustration has nothing to do with liberal vs conservative, nothing to do with politics or ideology of any kind. I’ve studied psychology for years, specifically personality types. I’ve seen these kinds of communication difficulties many times. If I had to make a quick (and, of course, rather superficial) guess, I’d say you are probably what is called in MBTI an NT (iNtuition Thinking) or to be more exact I’d guess an INTJ (Introverted iNtuition Thinking Judging). I’ve found most conflicts of communication are at least partly if not mostly grounded in psychological issues. I learned a lot about myself and about others by studying personality types and trait research. It’s easy to blame others. It’s much more difficult to come to self-awareness and self-understanding.
After that, he sent me a message that was pages long and so I won’t quote it here, but it was just a continuation of what he had already said. Basically, he was saying that going by his own experience he knew that he was intellectually superior to most people and that he had grown tired of debating the lowly leftist masses. Here is my response to that long message:
Reading this new message, I feel even less assured. You believe you are right and you believe you are intellectually superior to almost everyone. I don’t hold such arrogant assumptions about myself. And I tend to not like to interact with people who are that arrogant.
Also, your arrogance seems naive. You say you’ve won all these debates. But how do you know? Did you declare your own victory? Maybe those you debated also had the exact same opinion about themselves. Maybe even others told them that they had won.
The only thing that you’ve made clear is this. No matter what I say, you will claim I broke one of your rules. No matter how well I argue, you will simply claim you won. It’s not that you’re tired of debating. It seems you’re tired of even trying to debate.
Why not drop the arrogance? Just relax. You seem to be taking everything too seriously. The reason I don’t like debate is because I’ve found closed-minded people love debate. I like people who enjoy learning. In particular, I like people who like learning new perspectives. But you’ve given no inkling that you actually understand others or want to understand others. In such a situation, how can useful or pleasant communication even be possible?
Just the fact that you generalize about all ‘leftists’ shows a lazy intellect. It also demonstrates that you are unlikely to treat respectfully anything I present. You assume you’ve already got my type figured out, but going by your own words I’m not sure you understand leftists at all. If I tried to discuss/debate anything with you, I’d probably just end up being more fodder for your self-fulfilling prophecies. Think about it. Who will decide who wins the debate? You will, of course. And, since you haven’t admitted to losing a debate in years, why would you admit any such thing now? In your eyes, I can’t win for losing.
You seem intelligent, but there is something about you that seems self-enclosed almost to the point of narcissism or something. I don’t know if I’d be able to break through the protective barrier you are hiding behind. Honestly, I don’t at the moment see it’s worth the effort.
You say I came to you. Yes, I did. And then you deleted my comments. You responded that it was an accident and that it was only 8 comments. I still don’t see how 8 comments could be deleted accidentally. It just doesn’t seem logically possible. I could understand accidentally deleting 1 comment, but 8 comments is no accident. My allegation of hypocrisy still stands and you have yet to refute it. From my perspective, such hypocrisy is a sign of your character. I can only assume that if I were to discuss/debate with you that I’d expect more of the same underhanded behavior.
If you hadn’t deleted my comments, we could already be having a discussion/debate. I offered you evidence in those comments. You dismissed that evidence and you didn’t even offer any evidence in return. I just don’t know. meh
Posted on January 28, 2011 by Benjamin David Steele
I heard once again someone stating that Democrats start more wars. To give a quick response to that statement, I’d point out that it takes both parties to start a war… and there is a big difference between wars of defense and wars of aggression. But the comment and my response isn’t all that important… or, I should say, not all that interesting to me.The reason for this is because the person was responding to a comment where I didn’t even mention either of the parties. I don’t care to defend the war record of the Democratic Party. I’m an independent liberal, not a Democrat.
“I always wonder why rightwingers love war so much. Looking past all the patriotic propaganda, destroyed lives is the reality of war. But once the soldiers come home all the lovers of war suddenly stop caring.”
Starting with this as a working hypothesis, I have two purposes for this post. First, I want to clarify what I see as the differences between ‘rightwingers’ and ‘liberals’, both being specific demographics rather than broad categories. Second, I want to determine what the data shows about each demograhic.
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I’ve pointed out many times that (based on the data from Beyond Red vs. Blue) only a 1/3 of Democrats even identify as liberals and almost 1/2 of liberals are Independents. Other sources show:
According to recent surveys by the New York Times and CBS News, between 18% and 27% of American adults identify as liberal, versus moderate or conservative. In the 2008 presidential election, exit polls showed that 22% of the electorate self-identified as “liberal.”
Furthermore, Republicans and Democrats had a major ideological reversal over this past century.
“Prior to 1964, both parties had their liberal, moderate, and conservative wings, each of them influential in both parties… After 1980, the Republicans became a mostly right-wing party… while the Democrats, while keeping their left wing intact… grew a substantial moderate wing in the 1990s in place of their old conservative wing”
So-called far leftwingers such as Obama are more conservative than many past Republicans such as Eisenhower. Heck, Obama is more socially conservative in terms of his actual policies (continuing the War on Drugs, Gitmo, and torture) than many rightwing libertarians. Partisan rhetoric doesn’t mean much to me, but I do consider meaningful the differences between liberal and conservative (as general worldviews, attitudes, and psychological traits).
I’ve written about the correlation, although not equivalence, of conservatism and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)… or, to be more specific, about the correlation that at least exists within the population of the United States (to be fair, the correlation may not exist in other countries, especially not in countries that don’t have a rightwing religious tradition). At that post I quoted the following:
It is not that all Republicans are authoritarians; nor that all Democrats are non-authoritarian. Far from it. And people adopt party affiliations for a variety of reasons. But whereas those with the authoritarian cognitive style used to be more evenly split between the parties, decades of appeals for “states rights”, “law and order”, and against ERA, gay rights and immigration reform have concentrated this particular personality type in the GOP. And the consequence of that decades-long process has been the emergence of a Republican party that is, to a remarkable degree, built on viscera — on appeals to anger and resentment, and a deeply-felt conviction that America is breaking down irretrievably and that the way to stop that process is to demonize and marginalize outgroups deemed responsible for that breakdown. And this is no longer a geographically confined phenomenon, but a fully national one.
I’ve also written about recent research showing that conservatives have a predisposition toward violence. For example, here is a description of one study:
The finding suggests that people who are particularly sensitive to signals of visual or auditory threats also tend to adopt a more defensive stance on political issues, such as immigration, gun control, defense spending and patriotism. People who are less sensitive to potential threats, by contrast, seem predisposed to hold more liberal positions on those issues.
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I’m not sure how strong of conclusions can be based on any of this data, but it caused me to consider two lines of thought.
First, I was wondering if liberals are always in the minority. The challenge is that liberalism never wins in that the goalposts are always shifting. What was liberal in the past just becomes the new conservative. So, the status quo is always in a sense conservative. This can be seen, for example, with conservatives identifying with classical liberalism which is just the liberalism from past centuries turned into an unchanging ideology. Or, as another example, most Americans identify as conservative even though the positions they hold are what liberals have been fighting for since the founding of the United States (US Demographics & Increasing Progressivism).
Another reason for the minority status of liberals is that maybe liberal genetics are newer in human evolution. Satoshi Kanazawa proposed a theory along these lines in order to explain the correlation of liberalism and higher IQ.
“General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.”
An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.
In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.
Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa’s hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as “very liberal” have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as “very conservative” have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.
Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans’ tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see “the hands of God” at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. “Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid,” says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. “So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists.”
Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women’s value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa’s analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.
So, even though liberals have influence to varying degrees depending on the society, liberalism will likely never be the predominant attitude in any society. My suspicion is that most politicians aren’t on average as liberal as certain other similarly well-educated demographics: artists, writers, journalists, academics, scientists, grassroots activists, et cetera. It seems to me that those with strong liberalism probably wouldn’t be very interested in national public office because mainstream politics is dominated by cronyism and corporatism. The few strong liberals who do get into national politics probably don’t often advance very far in their political careers.
My second line of thought was an extension of my previous blog posts on this topic. What exactly are the real world results of these predispositions? I did some quick research to see if I would come across any new info. A couple items caught my attention.
Here is a paper about right-wing authoritarianism (and social dominance orientation) in the context of the 9/11 attack:
In sum, our study contributes to the understanding of attitudes toward restrictive political measures that were issued in the aftermath of September 11 and thus to the understanding of psychological underpinnings of threats to democracy. Predispositions like RWA, SDO, political ideology, and personal values played a significant role in this matter. Although feelings of threat from terrorism did not automatically lead to stronger endorsement of surveillance measures and restriction of civil liberties, they reinforced the effect of RWA on support for surveillance.
Even more interesting is this detail from other research about moral choices:
They offered some other scenarios too, about collateral damage in military situations, for instance, and found similar differences: Conservatives accepted collateral damage more easily if the dead were Iraqis than if they were Americans, while liberals accepted civilian deaths more readily if the dead were Americans rather than Iraqis.
That is one juicy morsel. A liberal would rather have soldiers on own their side die if it would save innocent civilians… because, afterall, a soldier is trained to fight and die to protect people. A conservative, on the other hand, is more willing to sacrifice people even if innocent just as long as they are seen as ‘other’. This is a profound difference. To the liberal, the conservative is heartless in putting patriotic loyalty over the protection of the innocent. But, to the conservative, the liberal is a traitor in their being more willing to sacrifice soldiers who are courageously protecting us. Liberals tend to empathize with all humans more equally and conservatives tend to have a group mentality of ‘us’ vs ‘them’.
I should, however, point out that the generalization about liberals being against soldiers is unfair and inaccurate.
We see that liberals and progressives are more sympathetic toward animals and foreigners than are conservatives and libertarians. Conversely, though not to the same extent, conservatives are more sympathetic toward soldiers and babies than are progressives and liberals. Criminals, drug addicts, and the homeless are again more “popular” among progressives and liberals than among conservatives and libertarians.
Sympathy here is a relative term. Absolutely speaking, progressives and liberals are very sympathetic towards babies and American soldiers, for example. It is only when sympathy is compared between different groups that significant differences emerge. For very conservative voters, American soldiers are on the top. For progressives, soldiers share fourth place with foreigners.
The implication of this would seem to be that the more liberal someone is the more they’d be reluctant to commit to wars where innocents are unnecessarily endangered. I’d think that, for this reason, liberals would be particularly against wars of aggression such as the US invasion of Iraq. Considering 2/3 of Democrats don’t identify as liberal, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that most Democratic politicians didn’t strongly oppose Bush’s warmongering right after 9/11. If my theory is correct, liberals are always in the minority even within what is considered the liberal Democratic party.
So, when the rightwingers are hot and bothered about some new xenophobic fear, it’s hard for the liberal minority to counter it. This is particularly problematic considering social stress/uncertainty, fearmongering, and violent imagery can even make liberals more open to conservative views and more willing to accept authoritarian policies.
Liberals who gleaned most of their news from television in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks increased their support for expanded police powers, bringing them closer in line with the opinions of conservatives, a study by a UW-Madison researcher shows.
In contrast, heavy newspaper reading by liberals was related to lower levels of support for expanded police powers and for limits on privacy and freedom of information, basically reinforcing the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Dietram Scheufele, a journalism professor who conducted the study.
“TV pushed the two groups together in their thinking about post-9/11 policies, such as the Patriot Act. It made liberals more conservative. It took them away from what they initially believed and pushed them more toward a more conservative law-and-order stance,” Scheufele says.
The study, soon to be published in the journal Mass Communications & Society, is based on a survey of nearly 800 residents of Tompkins County, N.Y., in the fall of 2001, shortly after the attacks. Its results have been validated by two subsequent national surveys.
The survey showed that among liberals who watched little television, about 20 percent favored more government police powers. But about 41 percent of liberals who were heavy viewers of TV news supported such measures – much closer to the 50 to 60 percent of conservatives who supported greater police powers, regardless of how much TV news they watched.
The gap between conservatives and liberals widened, however, among heavy newspaper readers.
About 39 percent of light-reading liberals backed restricting freedom of speech in the days after the attacks, versus 31 percent who were heavy newspaper readers. Among conservatives, about 66 percent favored the limits, and nearly 70 percent of heavy readers backed the restrictions.
“Newspaper reading tended to reinforce partisan leanings, partly because it is more selective, readers have more options and seek out their own viewpoints,” Scheufele says. “By contrast, TV coverage is very linear, doesn’t offer any choice and was more image driven. You saw the plane hitting the building time and time again.”
Still, the difference between liberals and conservatives remains true and relevant. Another aspect of this difference has to do with willingness to compromise and seek bipartisanship. I went into the details of this in another post where I pointed out, for example, that Republicans tend to only show strong support for Republican administrations and yet Democrats tend to show strong support no matter which party is in power. In an article I found, the author theorized the liberal attitude had to do with conflict avoidance… which the author thought most closely correlated to the personality trait of ‘agreeableness’ (a trait that both liberals and libertarians tend to test higher on than do conservatives; this could explain why both liberals and libertarians joined together in protesting against Bush starting the Iraq war):
Perhaps the concept of non-partisanship, conflict avoidance, and compromise is inherently appealing to liberal sensibilities. This can be framed as both a positive or negative trait, as being extremely conflict avoidant could relate to appeasing one’s enemies or being a moral relativist. Some in the press have observedthat “An endorsement of civility and reason is basically an endorsement of Barack Obama. ‘Reason and civility’ are practically the Democratic party’s platform.” Perhaps anyone with the motivation to promote reason and civility in politics would necessarily attract a liberal audience, regardless of how truly non-partisan one intended to be.
What psychological traits might relate to being conflict avoidant? The most obvious trait is Agreeableness, one of the Big Five dimensions of personality, depicted in the below graph ofyourmorals.org data. As you can see, liberals do score slightly higher on measures of Agreeableness, which includes questions like not finding “fault with others” and being “generally trusting”.
The effect size is fairly small though, so it might help to find some convergent evidence. I did find this paper, where a nationally representative sample was asked if people ”try to avoid getting into political discussions because they can be unpleasant, whether they enjoy discussing politics even though it sometimes leads to arguments, or whether they are somewhere in between.” There was a small, but significant correlation (r=.07) between being conflict tolerant and being Republican and a smaller, but insignificant correlation (r=.03) between being conflict avoidant and being a Democrat. This paper cites 6 instances where Agreeableness is negatively linked to conservativism, but also 2 instances where it is positively linked. It seems like there may be a link between being agreeable overall and being liberal (again, with both positive and negative connotations), but the link is certainly weaker than other effects (e.g. openness to experience or conscientiousness). Perhaps whatever effect exists due to differences in Agreeableness may be magnified by lower liberal perceptions of ingroup/outgroup distinctions, leading to reduced willingness to engage in conflict with out-groups, as conservatives have heightened concerns about constructs like group loyalty.
This next study connects how all of this relates specifically to being sympathetic to others (outside of one’s focus and, I would add, outside of the focus of one’s self identity or group identity).
In a new study, UNL researchers measured both liberals’ and conservatives’ reaction to “gaze cues” — a person’s tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person’s eye movements, even if it’s irrelevant to their current task — and found big differences between the two groups.
Liberals responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not.
Why? Researchers suggested that conservatives’ value on personal autonomy might make them less likely to be influenced by others, and therefore less responsive to the visual prompts.
“We thought that political temperament may moderate the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, but we did not expect conservatives to be completely immune to these cues,” said Michael Dodd, a UNL assistant professor of psychology and the lead author of the study.
Liberals may have followed the “gaze cues,” meanwhile, because they tend to be more responsive to others, the study suggests.
By the way, this would seem to be measuring something similar to traits such as need for closure which has been researched in terms of conservatism (but I’m not sure how strong is the correlation):
Let me return to the study about liberal and conservative view of soldiers and foreigners. Obviously, to want to treat all people equally and fairly (whether a part of one’s group or not) originates from an attitude of conflict avoidance, of ‘agreeableness’, of sympathetic responsivness. Maybe the difference (about how people treat the perceived ‘other’, whether enemy combatants or just innocent civilians) can be seen in the following video about an action the US military took in Afghanistan. The action seems typical of the conservative mindset and the response to the video seems typical of the liberal mindset.
I realize some would point out that we don’t know if anyone was necessarily killed, but then again we don’t know that no one was killed. It isn’t good policy to obliterate villages with bombs without even going into the village to make sure there are no innocent people still there.
Also, put this into context of all the innocent people who have been killed. It’s obvious the US military isn’t actually there to help the people living there. The response to 9/11 is entirely out of proportion. More people have died in our seeking national ‘defense’ and patriotic retribution than were lost on 9/11. Ten years later, we have almost no beneficial result to show for any of it. If anything, there are more terrorists and potential terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq than before we invaded.
How many innocent Americans died in the 9/11 terrorist attack?
I hear the criticisms of all this. The research is biased. Or I’m speculating too much. Or I’m just playing semantic games by separating liberalism from the Democratic Party. Or the fact that most Americans originally supported the wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear ya. I realize I’m not likely to convince anyone with an opposite opinion (confirmation bias, backfire effect, and the power of misinformation). If you don’t trust any data I have or could share, there ain’t much room for discussion of any kind. Yes, I have a liberal bias which is showing throughout this entire post… from what research interests me to the conclusions I make (I try to be aware of my biases and not get blinded by them, but my success or failure in this regard is for others to decide). I honestly don’t know how to answer criticisms about all of this. I guess just take it or leave it.
Ignoring all that, let me instead consider this issue in light of public opinion (I hope that, even if you don’t trust the opinions of liberals and scientists, you at least trust the opinions of the public). I started this post by pointing out the problems with talking about all of this in a partisan manner. I’m not going to deny that when Bush started the wars many Democrats supported him, that when Bush pushed for the Patriot Act many Democrats patriotically cheered it on… and, of course, that when Obama came into office nothing really changed (or, to put it into the language of Palin, “How’s that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?”). I just don’t care. Fuck the politicians of both parties, a pox on both of their houses. That is my analysis of that issue.
So, public opinion: What does the American people think, specifically what do various demographics think? Is there a clear distinction that can be seen between those on the left and those on the right in terms of support for recent wars?
Public opinion is a good test for the original inquiry considering these wars have very much been a bipartisan effort, but I must point out that even within the limited framework of the two party system there are still major differences to be seen. Even though the Democratic Party may not be a liberal party in the eyes of liberals, many liberals see it as their only option which is why most liberals voted for Obama (liberals want to believe in the rhetoric Democratic politicians spew just as libertarians want to believe in the rhetoric Republican politicians spew). Unfortunately, most polling is done using the categories of Republican and Democrat and I suppose the two parties are rough equivalents to conservative and liberal (in that, even though conservatives exist in both parties, significant numbers of liberals are only found in the Democratic party). Alas, I can’t entirely escape the partisan issue. So, I’ll be forced to rely on polling using partisan labels, but I’ll try to include enough other polling data to clarify the positions of rightwingers and leftwingers.
I’ll start with Afghanistan. The war there was definitely bipartisan and even supported by liberals. Those who attacked on 9/11 were located in Afghanistan, although most of them originated from Saudi Arabia. If it was a partisan issue, it would be expected that mostly Republicans supported the war during the Bush administration and mostly Democrats supported the war when Obama took over… but that isn’t what the data shows.
Support for President Barack Obama’s policy in Afghanistan turns the political landscape upside down. Democrats say 62 – 33 percent the United States should not be there, even though they strongly support President Obama heavily on virtually all other issues. Republicans, who oppose Obama on most issues, back the war 64 – 31 percent. Independent voters say 54 – 40 percent the United States should not be in Afghanistan.
It’s in fact the opposite of what partisan politics would predict. So, Republicans are bipartisan in their support of the Afghanistan War.
So, what about the Iraq War? There was moral and rational justification for the Afghanistan War, but there was no moral or rational justification for the Iraq War. The Iraq War is the very definition of a war of aggression (which is an illegal war and doesn’t meet the standards of a just war).
The political polarization regarding support for the Iraq War has been unprecedented. Recent polls by Gallup and others show that a majority of Republicans now support the war (about 70 percent, on average, versus 25 percent opposed), while an even larger majority of Democrats oppose it (about 15 percent supporting versus 80 percent opposed). At the start of the war, the partisan divide was not as great as it is today: According to a poll taken by Gallup in July 2003, Republicans overwhelmingly favored the United States’s sending troops to Iraq (by 88 percent to 12 percent), while Democrats were evenly divided (49 percent to 49 percent). But one year later, Gallup found, the public had become sharply polarized, as Democrats’ opposition to the war (82 percent versus 16 percent support) reached the exact opposite level of Republicans’ support (82 percent versus 16 percent opposed).
It’s a sad fact that many people believed the lies told by the Bush administration. The public, the media, and the politicians are all to be blamed for not strongly questioning those lies, but it should be pointed out that the two groups that did question the most were the libertarians and liberals. It also should be pointed out that it was mostly Republicans who chose to continue to believe those lies long after they were proven to be intentional misinformation.
Looking at these opinions in historic context, Gallup’s mid-2007 average finding of nearly three-fifths of the public saying the Iraq War was a mistake was somewhat more negative than the highest negative reading the organization obtained during the Korean War, when about half (51 percent) called it a mistake in February-March, 1952, but it was slightly less negative than the worst reading recorded during the Vietnam war in May 1971 (61 percent).
In neither of those conflicts, however, was the public polarized politically to the extent it is today. During the Vietnam War there was little difference by party affiliation on Gallup’s mistake question. And while the Republican/Democrat divide reached seventeen percentage points at the height of public opposition to the Korean War in 1952, when 61 percent of Republicans versus 44 percent of Democrats called it a mistake, this was hardly a third of the current fifty-five-percentage-point partisan divide over Iraq reported in the fall of 2005, when 80 percent of Democrats versus 25 percent of Republicans said the war was mistake.
In contrast to their views on Iraq, most Americans continue to support “sending military forces to Afghanistan” and are far less polarized over it. In August 2007 70 percent of the public told Gallup that sending troops to Afghanistan was not a mistake, with 88 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats concurring.
Let me clarify a confusion in the above quote. Pundits and politicians may be more polarized now than in the past, but the general public isn’t necessarily more polarized. The public has consensus on many issues. So, the differences of public opinion about different wars can’t simply be chalked up to polarization. In those past wars, there was some justification in that we perceived ourselves fighting a clear enemy who was a clear threat to national security. This wasn’t the case when we invaded Iraq.
Although the difference isn’t polarization in general, maybe it is about specifically polarized opinions about wars of aggression. Liberals and conservatives agree in supporting what are perceived as just wars. Conservatives are more supportive of wars in general, but liberals aren’t. If a war isn’t seen as clearly just, liberal support goes down. This has happened with the Iraq war which was initially perceived as just based on Bush’s lies and then later perceived as unjust (at least by liberals) once the lies were seen for what they were. The Afghanistan war, however, still can be reasonably seen as a just war or seen as having started as a just war.
Most Democrats say the war has not helped keep the U.S. secure (59 percent) while most Republicans say it has (70 percent). Independents split evenly on the question (48 percent has, 48 percent has not).
This demonstrates a difference of worldview. Those on the left believe a war of aggression just leads to more aggression. Those on the right believe that once an enemy has been declared, justly or unjustly, that enemy must be beaten into submission so that they can’t be a further threat.
This change of perception has been driven by the left, who previously claimed that Afghanistan was indeed the only proper war worth fighting:
Although 60 percent of Americans approve of how Obama has handled the situation in Afghanistan, his ratings among liberals have slipped, and majorities of liberals and Democrats alike now, for the first time, solidly oppose the war and are calling for a reduction in troop levels.
Overall, seven in 10 Democrats say the war has not been worth its costs, and fewer than one in five support an increase in troop levels.
Among the right, the war there is still seen as worth fighting and winning:
Republicans (70 percent say it is worth fighting) and conservatives (58 percent) remain the war’s strongest backers, and the issue provides a rare point of GOP support for Obama’s policies. A narrow majority of conservatives approve of the president’s handling of the war (52 percent), as do more than four in 10 Republicans (43 percent).
Interestingly, as the article states, this is a “rare point of GOP support for Obama’s policies”. And it pits both Obama and the GOP against the left and, I would guess, a Congress which will eventually reflect the constituency against the war that the numbers above show. There’s a reason for that.
That last bit of commentary fits my own analysis. On many issues, Obama’s stated opinions and policies are more in line with Republicans. Assuming Obama is a liberal, he is a very moderate and centrist liberal. Certainly, self-identified liberals take issue with labeling Obama a liberal. Yes, to the rightwinger, Obama is a liberal… but, then again, almost everyone in America is to the left of the far right (by definition).
All of this becomes more complex with more specific data.
The first two sets of data show public opinion from 2002. The third set of data is about public opinion during a past war. Interestingly, in both cases, the young are less wary about war (maybe it’s a case of wisdom coming with age). I doubt this youth support of war has anything directly to do with partisan politics. However, the youth opinion of today is essentially the same as the liberal opinion. Like liberals and Democrats in general, today’s youth initially supported both wars and since have had shrinking support, especially for the Iraq war. However, there is other more recent data which I’ve posted elsewhere. Here is the specific quote that caught my attention when looking at the report:
To be sure, Millennials remain the most likely of any generation to self-identify as liberals; they are less supportive than their elders of an assertive national security policy and more supportive of a progressive domestic social agenda. They are still more likely than any other age group to identify as Democrats.
It is interesting that they are the most liberal and most Democratic of any generation. I should clarify the two sets of youth data aren’t entirely comparable. The 2002 data refers to 18-29 year olds which would include both younger GenXers and older Millennials. GenXers are the most Republican of any generation (although younger GenXers are less Republican) and so maybe the 2002 data is too skewed to use as a comparison with the more recent Millenial data.
Let us look at other detailed info from Pew’s Beyond Red vs Blue (2005).
The liberal demographic (which is one of the youngest demographics) strongly disagrees with and most conservatives (in particular, conservative Republicans) strongly agree with the following:
Opposes lowering defense/military spending in order to reduce deficit
Using military force against countries that may seriously threaten our countrybut have not attacked us
Using military force in Iraq was the right decision
The U.S. militaryeffort in Iraq going fairly well
The interesting thing about the data is that conservative Democrats are more closely aligned with liberals than with conservative Republicans. This could be interpreted in two ways: 1) partisan politics has more effect on public opinion than does the left/right divide; or 2) conservative Democrats are far less conservative than conservative Republicans. I think both are true, but the second interpretation is important because it demonstrates how labels have different meanings in different contexts. Rightwing conservatives wouldn’t consider conservative Democrats as ‘real’ conservatives. So, when I use the term ‘rightwinger’, I’m intentionally making a distinction between the far right and the average American who identifies as conservative. I don’t think conservatives in general are warmongering, but I do think that the data shows far right conservatives (i.e., rightwingers) are more prone to support war. As a related example of this distinction, most Americans identify as conservative and most Americans don’t support torture, but most Southern Evangelicals (i.e., the religious right) do support torture. Another example about attitudes toward violence is that 28% of Republicans (but only 11% of Democrats and 11% of Independents) answered ‘yes’ to the question, “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?” As for the Iraq war, the religious right were the strongest supporters from the beginning (which might be because the president was a born-again who portrayed the War on Terrorism as a holy war).
Washington: Of the major religious groups in the United States, evangelical Christians are the biggest backers of Israel and Washington’s planned war against Iraq, says a new survey released here on 9 October by a politically potent group of fundamentalist Christians and Jews.
Some 69% of conservative Christians favour military action against Baghdad; 10 percentage points more than the US adult population as a whole.
However, it’s not necessarily just the religious right. Republicans in general remain the strongest supporters of Afghanistan despite there being little beneficial results shown for all the money spent and lives lost. Here is from very recent data:
CNN is out with a NEW POLL showing that support among Americans for the war in Afghanistan has declined dramatically in the past two years.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents are opposed to the war, while only 35 percent support it. Interestingly, perhaps even predictably, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats or independents to back the U.S. war effort.
Which brings to mind the extent to which concepts of American patriotism have been influenced — or distorted, in a sense — by Republicans with regard to our country’s military involvement in the so-called War on Terror.
For the past decade, Republicans have tended to think of themselves as more-patriotic-than-thou and have generally been enthusiastic supporters of U.S. military adventurism. They’ve been quick to characterize war dissenters as cut-and-run appeasers, if not cowards or enemy sympathizers.
The article offers some useful context by looking at public opinion over this last century (unfotunately, the graph doesn’t show the party differences):
But it wasn’t always that way. Back in the day, when the GOP was controlled mainly by isolationists, its rank-and-file was often opposed to U.S. involvement in foreign wars. Republicans were against American intervention in World War I (and vehemently opposed Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to create the League of Nation’s at the end of that war). Republicans also were staunchly opposed to U.S. involvement in World War II prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
[...] Nor were Republicans especially hawkish about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In a Gallup poll conducted in June of 1967, a majority of Republican respondents said Vietnam was a mistake, while only one-third of Democrats agreed with them.
Even as American forces were leaving Southeast Asia and communist forces were overrunning Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia, most Republican respondents in a 1975 Gallup poll opposed any further U.S. military aid to the friendly governments in those countries.
Briefly stated, then, Republicans tended to be fairly dovish through much of the 20th century.
That goes back to my original point. It can’t be denied that the GOP today is the war party, but that is far from saying the GOP has always been the war party. Back when the GOP had a leftwing, Republicans were much more weak in their support for war. And, back when the Democratic Party was more conservative, Democrats were much stronger in their support for war. So, support for war can’t be determined merely by partsan identification. The determining factor is whether a particular party is more conservative or more liberal.
- – -
I want to wrap this up with one last issue about confounding factors which I briefly mentioned near the beginning of this post.
Here is one view on the issue of rightwingers. The author, Corey Robin, begins with giving the history of those who first analyzed this ideological phenomenon.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Authoritarian Personality. Once this was the most famous of Theodor Adorno’s works. Today it’s largely forgotten. With one exception: its indelible portrait of the “pseudo-conservative.” Although Richard Hofstadter is often credited with the term—his essay “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt” appeared in 1955—it was Adorno and his three co-authors who first identified the type: that vengeful and violent citizen who avows his faith in calm and restraint while agitating for policies that “would abolish the very institutions with which he appears to identify himself.” The pseudo-conservative, in other words, is no conservative at all. Prone to “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness,” he loves war and longs for bedlam in the streets. He has “little in common,” in Hofstadter’s words, “with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism.”
He then presents the common distinction between the real conservative and those who supposedly are falsely identifying as conservative.
While the contrast between the true conservative and the pseudo-conservative has been drawn in different ways—the first reads Burke, the second doesn’t read; the first defends ancient liberties, the second derides them; the first seeks to limit government, the second to strengthen it—the distinction often comes down to the question of violence. Where the pseudo-conservative is captivated by war, Sullivan claims that the true conservative “wants peace and is content only with peace.” The true conservative’s endorsements of war, such as they are, are the weariest of concessions to reality. He knows that we live and love in the midst of great evil. That evil must be resisted, sometimes by violent means. All things being equal, he would like to see a world without violence. But all things are not equal, and he is not in the business of seeing the world as he’d like it to be.
For the rest of the article, Robin makes the case for this distinction being false.
The question for us, which Burke neither poses nor answers, is: What kind of political form entails this simultaneity of—or oscillation between—aggrandizement and annihilation? One possibility is hierarchy, with its twin requirements of submission and domination; the other is violence, particularly warfare, with its rigid injunction to kill or be killed. Perhaps not coincidentally, both are of great significance to conservatism as a theoretical tradition and historical practice.
Consistent with Burke’s argument, however, the conservative often favors the latter over the former. Once we are assured of our power over another being, says Burke, it loses its capacity to harm or threaten us. Make a creature useful and obedient, and “you spoil it of every thing sublime.” It becomes an object of contempt, contempt being “the attendant on a strength that is subservient and innoxious.” At least one-half, then, of the experience of hierarchy—the experience of ruling another—is incompatible with, and indeed weakens, the sublime. Confirmed of our power, we are lulled into the same ease and comfort, undergo the same inward melting, that we experience while in the throes of pleasure.
Rule may sometimes be sublime—our power is not always so assured or secure—but violence is more sublime. Most sublime of all is when the two are fused, when violence is performed for the sake of creating, defending, or recovering a regime of domination. But history does not always present such opportunities. The conservative must settle for the lesser good of war, pure and simple. Thus, when Carl Schmitt declares that the fundamental distinction in politics to which all “actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy,” he merely formalizes an axiom that had been stirring the conservative mind for more than a century.
That is an attractive argument and I’m partly persuaded by it. I do think there is some truth in it, but I’m not entirely sure it fully or perfectly captures the reality. Bob Altemeyer, in his book The Authoritarians, provides his own definition of a ‘rightwinger’.
Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in theirsociety, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such peoplehave historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled,customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically thesefollowers have personalities featuring:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities intheir society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.
Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers rightwingauthoritarians. I’m using the word “right” in one of its earliest meanings, for inOld English “riht”(pronounced “writ”) as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct,doing what the authorities said.
But then qualifies this definition by pointing out that rightwing as a psychological trait isn’t necessarily the same thing as rightwing as a political ideology.
In North America people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, 2 so you can call them “right-wingers” both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.
You could have left-wing authoritarian followers as well, who support a revolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the establishment. I knew a few in the 1970s, Marxist university students who constantly spouted their chosen authorities, Lenin or Trotsky or Chairman Mao. Happily they spent most of their time fighting with each other, as lampooned in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’sFront of Judea devotes most of its energy to battling, not the Romans, but the Judean People’s Front. But the left-wing authoritarians on my campus disappeared long ago. Similarly in America “the Weathermen” blew away in the wind. I’m sure one can find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient number snow to threaten democracy in North America. However I have found bucketfuls of right-wing authoritarians in nearly every sample I have drawn in Canada and the United States for the past three decades. So when I speak of “authoritarian followers” in this book I mean right-wing authoritarian followers, as identified by the RWA scale.
Altemeyer clarifies this with research.
As soon as Gorbachev lifted the restraints on doing psychological research in the Soviet Union an acquaintance of mine, Andre Kamenshikov, administered a survey to students at Moscow State University with the same freedom that western researchers take for granted. The students answered the RWA scale and as well a series of questions about who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy” in the Cold War. For example, did the USSR start the arms race, or the USA? Would the United States launch a sneak nuclear attack on the Soviet Union if it knew it could do so without retaliation? Would the USSR do that to the United States? Does the Soviet Union have the right to invade a neighbor who looks like it might become allied with the United States? Does the USA have that right when one of its neighbors starts cozying up to the USSR? At the same time Andre was doing his study, I asked the same questions at three different American universities.
We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government’sversion of the Cold War more than most people did. Their officials wore the white hats, the authoritarian followers believed, and the other guys were dirty rotten warmongers. And that’s most interesting, because it means the most cock-sure belligerents in the populations on each side of the Cold War, the ones who hated and blamed each other the most, were in fact the same people, psychologically. If they had grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they probably would have believed the leaders they presently despised, and despised the leaders they now trusted. They’d have been certain the side they presently thought was in the right was in the wrong, and instead embraced the beliefs they currently held in contempt.
Based on the research, several things relevant to this post can be concluded about Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWAs):
1) RWAs support/promote violence and war.
[...] high RWAs tend to make an ambiguous situation dangerous [...] are likely to turn a secure situation into a dangerous one.
2) RWAs aren’t well informed (which relates to their higher rates of hypocrisy).
Dunwoody, Plane, Rice and Rothrock thus found that as late as August 2005 andJanuary 2006 high RWA Pennsylvania college students were likely to have inaccurateperceptions of the war in Iraq in all the areas tested. They believed Iraq had usedchemical or biological weapons against American troops, that Iraq’s government washighly connected with al-Qaida, that Americans had found evidence in Iraq thatSaddam was working closely with al-Qaida, that most people in the world favored theUnited States’ going to war in Iraq, and so did most people in Europe. They alsobelieved that the U.S. had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but this wasonly statistically significant at the .09 level. In general the students were betterinformed than the American public as a whole, but the authoritarian followers amongthem still carried a lot of demonstrably erroneous beliefs around in their heads.
3) RWAs have a strong tendency to rationalize away inconvenient facts.
David Winters of the University of Michigan found in 2005 that the high RWAs in a largesample of university students believed the invasion of Iraq constituted a just war. They thoughtthe danger posed by Iraq was so great, the United States had no other choice. They thought theinvasion occurred only as a last resort, after all peaceful alternatives had been exhausted, and thatthe war would bring about more good than evil. They rejected the notion that the failure to findweapons of mass destruction showed the “pre-emptive” attack had not been necessary for selfdefense.They also rejected the suggestion that the war was conducted to control oil supplies andextend American power, or as an act of revenge. And they still believed that Saddam had beeninvolved in the 9/11 attacks.
4) RWAs, at least in the North American population, have weak correlation to fiscal conservatism and strong correlation to social conservatism.
RWA scale scores correlated highest with attitudes against samesexmarriage, abortion, drugs, pornography, women’s equality, unconventionalbehavior and free speech, and with support for the Patriot Act and America’s “right”to spread democracy by military force. In contrast, the relationships with economicissues (taxation, minimum wage, the public versus private sector, free trade) proved much weaker. The data thus indicate, as do a lot of other findings, that high RWAs are“social conservatives” to a much greater extent that they are “economic conservatives.”
To give more context in American politics, here is an excerpt from another book (Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics by Hetherington and Weiler):
Those who score high in authoritarianism tend to have a different cognitive style than those who score low. The former tend to view the world in more concrete, black and white terms (Altemeyer 2996; Stenner zoos). This is probably because they have a greater than average need for order. In contrast, those who score lower in authoritarianism have more comfort with ambiguous shades of gray, which allow for more nuanced judgments.
Perhaps because of these cognitive differences, people who are more authoritarian make stronger than average distinctions between in-groups – the groups they identify with – and out-groups – groups that they perceive challenge them. Such a tendency has the effect of imposing order and minimizing ambiguity. In addition, those who are more authoritarian embrace and work to protect existing social norms (Feldman zoo3). These conventions are time-tested in their ability to maintain order. Altering norms could result in unpredictable changes with undesirable consequences.
Since the more authoritarian view the social order as fragile and under attack (Altemeyer 1996), they tend to feel negatively about, behave aggressively toward, and be intolerant of those whom they perceive violate time-honored norms or fail to adhere to established social conventions (Stenner zoo5). Specifically, scholars have shown a strong relationship between authoritarianism and negative affect toward many minority groups. Over the past fifty years, these groups have included Jews (Adorno et al. 1950; but see Raden 1999), African Americans (Sniderman and Piazza 1993), gays (Barker and Tinnick zoo6), and Arabs after September ii (Huddy et al. zoo5).6
Authoritarianism is a particularly attractive explanation for changes in contemporary American politics because it structures opinions about both domestic and foreign policy issues. In addition to having concerns about racial difference and social change, those who are more authoritarian tend to prefer more muscular responses to threats than those who are less. A proverbial punch to the mouth of an adversary results in a less ambiguous outcome than, say, negotiation or diplomacy. Not surprisingly, scholars have consistently drawn links between authoritarianism and a hawkish attitude toward foreign policy and resolution of conflict (Lipset 11959; Eckhardt and Newcombe 11969; Altemeyer 11996; Perrin zoos). Those scoring high in authoritarianism were also more likely than those scoring low to support military action after the September 1111 terrorist attacks (Huddy et al. zoos). Viewed as a whole, research on authoritarianism suggests that the same disposition that might dispose people to be anti-black or anti-gay might also dispose them to favor military conflict over diplomacy and protecting security over preserving civil liberties. A preference for order and a need to minimize ambiguity connects both impulses.
The events from another time in history provide suggestive evidence that the same disposition motivates both. Particularly in the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy set his sights not only on rooting communist elements out of the State Department and other government agencies. He also focused his attention, for a time, on purging homosexuals. McCarthy pointed to supposed links between communism and homosexuality, and his speeches often made passing reference to “Communists and queers” (Johnson zoo4). Other conservative senators, including Styles Bridges, Kenneth Wherry, and Clyde Hoey, pressed the issue of homosexuality along with communism during the Red Scare as well.
All this suggests that preferences about many of the new issues on the American political agenda, such as gay rights, the war in Iraq, the proper response to terrorism, and immigration are likely structured by authoritarianism. These are all potentially divisive topics, characterized by deeply held, gut-level views. Although contemporary American politics is perhaps not polarized in a strict definitional sense, insofar as preferences are not increasing number of salient issues are structured by a deeply felt worldview, specifically authoritarianism.
– - –
In conclusion:
1) The Republican Party is presently associated with rightwing politics (social conservatism), but it wasn’t always.
2) Social conservatism in the US is presently correlated with Right-Wing Authoritarianism, but this correlation is partly culture dependent.
3) Right-Wing Authoritarianism has been shown in research to include a predisposition to supporting of violence and war.
Let me return to my original comment:
“I always wonder why rightwingers love war so much. Looking past all the patriotic propaganda, destroyed lives is the reality of war. But once the soldiers come home all the lovers of war suddenly stop caring.”
Have I proven this to be true? Have I at least provided enough supporting evidence?
I think I have. I haven’t necessarily explained why Right-Wing Authoritarians are the way they are, but I have provided the correlations for how Right-Wing Authoritarian attitudes play out in American politics.
If one wishes to say that this has little to do with real conservatism, I’m fine with that. I honestly admit to not being sure what true conservatism might be. The people I consider true conservatives (or, at least, respectable and reasonable conservatives) are people like John W. Dean and Meghan McCain who vocally criticize the radical rightwingers who have taken over the conservative movement. I’d love to see some other version of conservatism to take the place of the present radical rightwingers.
Posted on August 27, 2010 by Benjamin David Steele
In this interview, David Callahan’s view intrigues me.
He is arguing that the liberal rich has been smaller in recent decades than the conservative rich. However, supposedly with the growing technology industry and the knowledge economy, there has been a growing liberal rich. These wealthy liberals are highly educated and got their wealth through entrepreneurship. It’s an interesting argument. Entrepreneurs are more likely to be liberal whereas old money and established corporations are likely to be conservative.
Over the last half century or so, the conservative rich created a massive infrastructure of conservative media, think tanks, lobbyist groups, and astro-turf movements. Liberals, on the other hand, have been very lacking in organization. But this apparently has been changing this last decade. I’d probably say it’s the internet that has been a boon for liberals because the internet makes it easier to do grassroots bottom-up organization which is where liberals excel. The argument, however, is that the internet has boomed along with the wealth of the liberals who started businesses in this sector. So, there was the introduction of tools for grassroots organization at the same time new money was funding liberal organizations and media.
It still seems liberals aren’t quite organized in a lock-step way as is seen among conservatives, but definitely a shift has happened.
The shift the author sees is in that the upper class is shifting away from the Republican party. “The upper class is becoming more educated, more secular, more based in urban America (particularly on the coasts). And the Republican party is becoming more religious, more based in small town America, and becoming less educated.” This argument seems supported by the evidence showing the average IQ of Republicans has decreased since a high point during Reagan’s administration.
I was just having a discussion about the conservative worldview. Many conservatives believe in meritocracy and that our society is a meritocracy. They assume that rich people deserve their wealth because they’ve somehow earned it or are somehow morally superior. The poor are therefore lazy and morally inferior. This is what George Lakoff calls the Moral Order principle of conservative Strict Father morality. It’s because of this Moral Order that conservatives complain about the rich getting taxed which they see as the government stealing from hardworking Americans. This, of course, ignores all the Americans who do work hard and all they get is the shaft from the wealthy elite.
It’s easy for some to think that this is just a liberal exaggeration, but sadly many conservatives do have such a warped view of reality. For example, Ben Stein made an interesting comment recently:
Writing at the American Spectator yesterday, former Nixon speechwriter and TV personality Ben Stein downplayed the suffering unemployed Americans are experiencing by writing that the people who are unemployed right now are “generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.” He claims the unemployed are Americans with “unpleasant personalities…who do not know how to do a day’s work“:
The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along — not always easy.
Of course, saying that the 15 million Americans who are unemployed right now are “generally” people with “poor work habits” is as offensive as it is wrong. The current recession is a global phenomenon caused by the collective bad behavior of the world’s largest financial institutions. Before the recession, the unemployment rate hovered around six percent; it is ludicrious to say that millions of Americans suddenly got lazier and less able to work within the span of a few months.
What is the motivation for Republicans being for and Democrats being against tax cuts for the rich? Many like to argue that both parties are in the pocket of the wealthy elite. But if that were the case, Democrat politicians should support tax cuts for the rich as much as Republicans do.
I often agree with those who criticize the two party system. It is mostly a sham, but I wouldn’t say it’s entirely a sham. Also, I’d point out that Republican and Democrat isn’t equivalent to conservative and liberal. I often argue that there are important differences that shouldn’t be ignored. I’ve often written about these differences, but one of my best posts on the subject (Liberal Pragmatism, Conservative Dogmatism) was where I gathered all of the data showing examples of how liberal policies are effective in the real world.
In that post, the most interesting examples are where the real world data contradict the ideologically commonsense assumptions. For instance, what many pro-lifers don’t understand is that pro-choicers also want to decrease the number of abortions. To the pro-lifer, it’s just commonsense that illegalizing abortions will decrease the numbers, but in this case commonsense is incorrect. Countries where abortions are illegalized have high rates of abortions and countries where abortions are legalized have low rates of abortions. It does make sense once you have all the data, but if you’re basing your decisions on ideology instead of data you will come to an incorrect conclusion.
My argument in that post was that liberals (who may or may not identify as Democrats) are more likely to prefer basing decisions on data… and the data does show that liberals are a very well-educated demographic. I explored this issue of liberal intellectualism and conservative anti-intellectualism in previous posts such as these: Conservative Mistrust & Ideological Certainty (part 1) and Conservative Mistrust & Ideological Certainty (part 2). The point I was making in those posts was that there are many conservatives, including intelligent conservatives, who are epistemologically mistrusting of all data, especially from the social sciences. There isn’t much that can be done about such people because there is no way to have an objective discussion with them. Their attitude of epistemological mistrust of data leads to an epistemologically self-enclosed worldview. It’s like talking to a Christian apologists. Such people have come to a conclusion before discussion even begins and any new data is meaningless.
Still, I like to believe that most people can be influenced by new data. I’ve come across examples of conservatives with very open minds and very rational intellects. Conservatism may make one more prone to anti-intellectualism, but that is a far cry from saying all or even most conservatives are therefore anti-intellectuals. In another recent post (Conservative Critics of Conservatism), I detailed some of the conservatives who I’ve come to respect for their independent thinking.
With Cenk Uygur’s video (linked at top), I was reminded of the example of economics. Conservatives love to talk economics because they’ve honed their rhetoric and talking points to near perfection. I even can agree with or can deem worthy some conservative criticisms which involve economics. There is some validity to fiscal conservatism, but the problem with fiscal conservatism isn’t in the ideology itself. Rather, it’s in those who use the ideology as rhetoric for winning votes. This is where data becomes so important which is why I just posted some of this data: National Debt, Starve the Beast, & Wealth Disparity. Both conservatives and liberals perceive themselves as moral (many seeing themselves as morally superior, maybe especially conservatives who think of morality in hierarchical terms), but I think an important aspect of morality is humility (Is that a liberal value? Conservatives do seem to have a talent for acting righteous.). I personally believe, which may simply be my liberal bias, that we should try to suppress our urge to be righteous until after the data is analyzed. If the data supports your position, then by all means untether your righteousness… but (with emphasis on that “but”) if the data doesn’t support your position, then instead of looking to criticize the data and rationalize your position maybe you should do some soul-searching.
Anyways, inspiration for this post began with thoughts I had about the data in the post about the national debt. In the post itself, I didn’t add any of my own commentary. I merely quoted in length the commentary of others and gathered some videos and charts. I wanted to add some commentary and so decided I should just start a separate post.
Whenever considering US politics (especially in terms of liberalism and conservatism), I usually think of one of my favorite sources of info: Beyond Red vs. Blue (and here is a short NPR segment about it). This is a survey done by Pew. They divided the US population into 9 demographics.
The two wealthiest demographics are the Enterprisers and the Liberals, the former being staunch Republicans and the latter being almost equally divided between Democrats and Independents.
Interestingly, the vast majority of Republicans identify as conservatives and so do almost half of Democrats with liberals being the minority in the Democratic party… which would seem to imply that the political debate truly has been pushed to the right and that Americans quite possibly have a confused sense of what conservative means – see: America: Conservative & Progressive and US Demographics & Increasing Progressivism. By the way, I noticed Wikipedia has some interesting articles: Conservative Democrat, Blue Dog Coalition, New Democrat Coalition, Liberal Republican, and Rockefeller Republican. From the article, Conservative Democrat: “Prior to 1964, both parties had their liberal, moderate, and conservative wings, each of them influential in both parties… After 1980, the Republicans became a mostly right-wing party… while the Democrats, while keeping their left wing intact… grew a substantial moderate wing in the 1990s in place of their old conservative wing”. Only the Democrat party seems to be presently maintaining both liberals and conservatives within its membership. Conservatives out-number moderates in the Republican party, but moderates out-number liberals in the Democratic party. Furthermore, 35% of Liberals identify as moderate while only 14% of Enterprisers identify as moderate (which means many of the Liberals within the Democrat Party are moderate Liberals and the far left Liberals are probably those who identify as Independents). This means that the Democratic party (including the Liberal Democrats) now represents the moderate political position (socialists, elitists?). However, the perception that Americans have come to have, as provided by the mainstream media, is that Republicans are moderates and Democrats are far left.
Both the Enterpriser and Liberal demographics have the same percentage of those in the upper economic bracket, but what distinguishes the Liberals is that they have a higher percentage (than the Enterprisers) of those from the lower economic bracket and so Liberals also have higher percentage of those who have experienced unemployment. Besides the wealth issue, both have high percentages of small business ownership and high percentages of trading stocks and bonds, but Enterprisers have the highest rates among all 9 demographics and Liberals have the third highest rate in both categories. So, these two demographics represent the two ideological ends of the spectrum of the wealthiest Americans (However, if you’re talking about the wealthy elite ruling the country, Enterprisers fit that description better than Liberals). Also, both are the two most highly educated demographics with Liberals being slightly better educated on average and, according to other data (Response to Rightwing Misinformation and Liberal Pragmatism, Conservative Dogmatism), Democrats in general have higher IQ on average than Repbulicans (so maybe, if Enterprisers are the wealthy elite, Liberals could be considered the intellectual elite… although both demographics are relatively wealthy and well-educated as compared to the rest of the population and so there is a limit to how well they fit their respective stereotypes).
In terms of my present discussion, the differences between the two are what interest me… and, unlike what conservatives say in their moments of empty rhetoric, one of those differences isn’t that liberals lack real world experience in business and economics. Here are some of the actual differences:
Who exactly are they?
Enterprisers are more white, more male and slightly older than the national average.
Liberals are nearly identical to the national averages in terms of race, gender and age.
Enterprisers are most loyal viewers of Fox News which is their main source of news.
Liberals watch tv news the least of all demographics and get news from the internet the most of all demographics.
What do they support?
Enterprisers show the strongest support for the Patriot Act.
Liberals show the least support for the Patriot Act.
Enterprisers mostly think preemptive military attacks against other countries can sometimes be justified.
Liberals mostly think preemptive military attacks against other countries only rarely can be justified.
Enterprisers are the least in favor of raising minimum wage.
Liberals are strongly in favor of raising minimum wage.
Enterprisers are the strongest in favor of privatizing social security.
Liberals are strongly opposed of privatizing social security.
Enterprisers are the most opposed to government guaranteeing health insurance to all citizens.
Liberals are the least opposed to government guaranteeing health insurance to all citizens.
Enterprisers are the most in favor of outsourcing American jobs.
Liberals are strongly opposed to outsourcing American jobs.
What are their views about government financial issues?
Enterprisers are the most in favor of cutting taxes, especially tax cuts for the rich.
Liberals are the most opposed to cutting taxes, including tax cuts for the rich.
Enterprisers put less priority on balancing the budget deficit than any other demographic.
Liberals put more priority on balancing the budget deficit than any other demographic.
Enterprisers show the least support for raising the taxes in order to reduce the deficit.
Liberals are the only demographic to show majority support for raising taxes to reduce the deficit.
Enterprisers show the least support for lowering defense/military spending to reduce the deficit.
Liberals are the only demographic to show majority support for lowering defense/military spending to reduce the deficit.
Enterprisers show the most support for lowering domestic spending to reduce the deficit.
Liberals are evenly split in their support for lowering domestic spending to reduce the deficit.
Basically, Enterprisers are social conservatives and fiscal liberals and Liberals are social liberals and fiscal conservatives.
Enterprisers are against any policy that favors the poor, the working class, and minorities; and are for any issue involving conservative morality and fundamentalist religion (such as wanting creationism to be taught in schools). Enterprisers, besides being neocons, are simply the religious right writ large with power and money. It’s because of the Enterprisers that the religious right have taken over the Republican party. One would be mistaken to think the religious right is simply represented by uneducated white southerners.
Liberals, despite also being mostly rich whites, support any policy that helps the poor, the working class, and minorities. It’s odd that Liberals support all the policies that directly cost them while only directly helping others. As a liberal, I assume that these Liberals believe that helping the least helps the entire society (which is proven by the data on wealth disparity comparisons: Mean Bosses & Inequality). As Enterprisers are the most religious demographic, Liberals are the least religious demographic. Liberals take seriously the Constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. In general, Liberals seem to value the Constitution more than Enterprisers or at least they are less willing to sacrifice (e.g., against torture and the Patriot Act which Enterprisers strongly support).
Enterprisers are on many of the issues 10-30% stronger in their opinions than Liberals. Enterprisers are the most conservative of conservatives (to be precise they are the most conservative on social conservative issues while the most liberal of all demographics on fiscal liberalism… which esentially makes them typical neoconservatives who are presently the leaders of the Republican party). Liberals also are the most liberal of liberals, but the difference is that Liberals seem more moderate on most issues. As I pointed out earlier in this post, there are more moderate liberals than moderate conservatives and there are more moderate Democrats than moderate Republicans. For example, even though Liberals show the most support for domestic spending (i.e., social programs), they were evenly split on this issue. There are few things more important to a liberal than social programs and yet liberals apparently hold fiscal conservatism as at least equal to their social liberalism. The only thing Liberals value more than fiscal conservatism are issues involving civil and constitutional rights.
The reason I compared these two groups is because they represent the two wealthy demographics among conservatives and liberals. So, I thought they should be fairly representative of two distinct worldviews of those who have power in this country. However, I should point out again that there are many conservatives in the Democrat party whereas liberals in the Republican party are almost non-existent. In the context of Washington politics, most Democratic and Republican politicians are probably closer to Enterprisers than to Liberals, at least in terms of actual policy decisions (whether or not in terms of rhetoric). For example, Obama’s health insurance plan which Republicans have called socialist is based on a proposal made by Republicans in the 1990s. So, conservative ideas from a decade ago are now considered to be far left ideology. This demonstrates how far right has shifted the entire political spectrum.
The data I’m using is a few years old (2005). I’d like to see some more recent data that has this much detail. Even so, the fact that Republican politicians remain staunch defenders of tax cuts for the rich seems to show the data hasn’t changed much since Bush was replaced by Obama. I don’t know how many Democratic politicians would fit the Pew description of the Liberal demographic, but definitely this kind of liberalism does manage to maintain some small influence over Democratic politicians. Even though Democratic politicians may not be staunch opponents of tax cuts for the rich, the liberal influence within the Democratic party does keep them from being staunch supporters.
As one last comment, if you support fiscal conservatism (as real world policies rather than mere rhetoric), you’d be wise to vote Democrat (or, if as a conservative you can’t stomach the idea of voting for a Democrat, maybe you should at least consider a third party). All of the recent Democratic presidents have been, going by the actual results, more fiscally conservative than all of the recent Republican presidents. However, if you simply like the sound of rhetoric and don’t care about the real world, then by all means keep voting Republican.
I’ve been very critical of conservatism this past year and have spent much time doing research. My motivation isn’t that I hate conservatives or think they’re ‘evil’ (well, some of them are obviously not nice people and possibly psychopaths, sociopaths, or Social Dominance Orientation types: Limbaugh, Cheney, Rove, Murdoch, Ailes, etc; and there are, of course, the Right-Wing Authoritarians who are the unquestioning followers that I’ve written about many times). I do get irritated and it’s not unusual for me to vent that irritation, but ultimately I desire to understand. My irritation isn’t knee jerk hatred for anyone who isn’t liberal. In fact, I can at times be quite critical of liberals as well, but the failings of liberals tends to just depress me.
Anyways, in my desire to understand conservatives, I have found that the best critics of conservatives are those who consider themselves conservatives. I’ve been reading a few books by such conservatives: Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean (originally intended to be written with Barry Goldwater before the latter became sick and died), Crazy for God by Frank Shaeffer (his views have helped me understand the religious right), and Bite the Hand That Feeds You by Henry Fairlie (which I discovered because the author was mentioned in an article in reference to Joe Stack’s suicide manifesto). The last book is by a British conservative which means most US conservatives wouldn’t accept him as one of their own, but I think his views on conservatism are some of the most insightful I’ve come across. I love Fairlie’s notion of a Tory. My understanding is that Toryism is connected with conservatism in Britain, but in the US Toryism seems more similar to the Democratic party. Another book I’m thinking of buying is Take Back the Right by Philip Gold (which I came across in reading Conservatives Without Conscience).
I keep coming across these rare independent-minded conservatives. I decided to keep a list for reference which is the reason I’m writing this post. Besides those already mentioned, here are some other conservative who have criticized conservatives (and often paid the price for dissent): Bob Inglis, David Frum, and Bruce Bartlett. I should also include William F. Buckley jr who criticized the radical right and helped kick them out of the mainstream conservative movement (only recently has this radical element been invited back in with the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and the Koch brothers). Let me make special note of Ron Paul who is the only recent Republican politician who has openly and strongly opposed the misuse of power by Republicans.
I respect anyone who is independent-minded, whether liberal or conservative. I don’t entirely agree with what these critical conservatives believe, but I find myself in more agreement with their more intelligent or at least more moderate version of conservatism. It’s interesting that David Frum who was the Bush speechwriter who came up with “Axis of Evil” would lose his job at a conservative think tank for pointing out the obvious. Dissent is not allowed in the present GOP and dissenters are punished. So, my respect for people like Frum (no matter how much I may disagree on particular issues) is well deserved. These dissenters are the future of the conservative movement (after the movement self-destructs).
I’ve been a bit critical of Barry Goldwater because it has seemed to me that he helped the conservative movement become radicalized. Afterall, it was Goldwater who wrote (and which is often quoted by radical rightwingers): “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” I’m sure I disagree with Goldwater on many issues, but in reading Dean’s book I’ve come to understand why Goldwater is worthy of respect. Goldwater wasn’t trying to radicalize the conservative movement. He was trying to bring conservatives back to what he considered traditional political values. Dean’s book has been helpful, especially in relation to Bob Altemeyer’s research which Dean references heavily. I found it interesting that Dean’s description of a “conservative with conscience” would, in at least moderate form, fit the description of many liberals which made me think of Fairlie’s description of the Tory conservatism being most similar to the Democrat party.
However, there was one aspect of Dean’s description that stood out (p. 71): “Freedom always trumps order and safety when government needs to weight them.” Two things occured to me. This statement represented the seed of radicalism that exists even within the moderate conservative in the US. Conservatives aren’t very conservative in the sense of actually wanting to conserve. They want to be ”free”… which brings me to my second point. Such an ideal of freedom is rather ideological. Liberals value freedom as much as conservatives, but liberals desire different freedoms and don’t use as much ideological rhetoric in defending those freedoms. The conservative often lacks understanding of complexity. Freedom from one thing tends to put people under the constraint of another thing. So, to the extent that one is free from government, other institutions and organizations will have greater power they can impose. If the government doesn’t regulate religions and corporations, they will (as they do in some countries) impose their power upon the public. There is no absolute thing called freedom because it’s a relative concept, an abstraction that we judge according to.
Fairlie’s Tory doesn’t desire freedom at all costs. The Tory instead desires to conserve. Unlike present US conservatives, the Tory tries to avoid radical change. It’s for this reason that the Tory is suspicious of capitalism and of concentration of wealth outside of the government. The government serves the public good, but capitalists have no such requirement. Even though the government may fail in its responsibilities, the government at least is obligated to attempt to live up to its responsibilities. The capitalist, on the other hand, doesn’t even have to pretend to be concerned about the public good. Also, capitalism tends to change quickly and so isn’t a dependable source of public good. Economies go up and down, CEOs and entire businesses come and go… but a government (like a church) is a permanent fixture. In a constitutional democracy like the US, the government is intentionally designed to be inefficient. This is a good thing considering the most efficient government is fascist. Centralization of power is dangerous and that is why our government has a division of power, but the only thing that keeps power from being centralized in any single corporation is that the government disallows monopolies from forming. Without regulation, capitalism (as it presently functions; I’m not speaking about theoretical ideals of capitalism) will tend towards the accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The constitution limits the power of the US government, but transnational corporations aren’t limited by any constitution.
As such, US conservatism which values capitalism and religion more than it values government doesn’t seem very conservative. Where are the Roosevelt conservatives who believed in conserving the environment and in conserving natural resources? Where are the Lincoln conservatives who believed in maintaining the Union at all costs? Despite my respect for Ron Paul, what is the point of running for political office on the platform that government is the problem? Going by the examples of recent conservative presidents (from Reagan to Bush jr), it seems that to run the government according to the ideology that government is a failure only helps to create a failing government. American conservatives don’t seem to trust the democratic process. I’ve even noticed a recent trend of conservatives denying that our political system is even a democracy. These conservatives want to treat the Constitution as if it were the Ten Commandments.
I sometimes get confused between the conservatives proclaiming freedom and the conservatives who act like authoritarians. When neoconservatives use libertarian rhetoric, it becomes extremely confusing and it’s hard to know when the libertarian rhetoric is genuine. Certainly, Reagan and Bush jr were no libertarians even though they gladly used such rhetoric to win support. However, there are those who overtly claim to be libertarian and yet it’s not clear that they are. Rupert Murdoch is an avowed libertarian who has been on the board of the Cato Institute which is a libertarian think tank, but if Murdoch is a libertarian then it’s become a meaningless word. This pro-capitalist big business libertarianism is a strange creature. Even Rand Paul, the son of the great Ron Paul, is quick to defend big business as he did with the BP oil spill (even while the actions of BP had led to the destruction of local small businesses). So, this is freedom? Whose freedom?
This is where the US conservative has difficulty in seeing clearly, even when they are otherwise critical. A British conservative like Fairlie has more insight in some ways than even someone like Dean who knows the Republican party from the inside. I want to understand US conservatism. I sometimes think I even wish to be convinced, to be won over. I want to believe that a moral version of conservatism can still exist in contemporary American politics. I genuinely respect and even agree with some conservative values. If those particular values were central to the conservative movement (in place of the present authoritarianism and radicalism), even a liberal like me could possibly be persuaded to identify as conservative. I most definitely could be a conservative according to Fairlie’s view of Toryism. Maybe it’s my own (non-radical) ‘conservative’ inclination that makes me feel so critical of the far right in the US.
I read an interesting analysis that compared liberals and conservatives in the US. The person was pointing out the different ways the two sides perceived Communism. Conservatives believed Communism was a massive threat. This implied that these conservatives, oddly, had great faith in the possible success of Communism in taking over the world and yet little faith in the strength of democracy. Liberals, on the other hand, tended to agree with Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The liberal has great faith in democracy and so trusts in the democratic process which he believes should never be sacrificed. A conservative like Dean seems to want to move in the direction of the liberal, but it’s not clear that he is willing to allow himself to do so. Like a good American conservative, he defines freedom in terms of being free of government, but our government is a democracy which protects our freedom. Even when our government fails in its duties, the liberal has faith in the democratic process, has faith in American culture, in American institutions, in the American public. The liberal doesn’t see the government as inherently in opposition to freedom. To get back to the analysis of Communism, the person who made the analysis said that he, as a liberal, always knew Communism would fail in that authoritarianism will always fail. The liberal seems more conservative in that the liberal is more concerned about conserving: conserving government institutions, conserving the democratic process, conserving civil rights, conserving the environment. Conservatives are the opposite in wanting to (often radically) return to some idyllic past that may never have existed.
In conclusion, I’m still searching for a worthy form of conservatism that could exist in America. The emphasis in that statement is on the “searching” part. I’m trying to imagine what a truly moral conservatism would look like, but the reality of present conservatism makes it difficult. Bob Altemeyer’s research shows that authoritarianism strongly correlates with conservative ideology in the US (specifically social conservatism). Nonetheless, he is careful to point out that authoritarianism isn’t identified with rightwing ideology and can at times become linked with leftwing ideology. So, in theory, an egalitarian conservatism that actually seeks to conserve should be possible, even in the US. Prior to the Southern Strategy, the Republican party wasn’t dependent on the wedge issues of race and religion. Even during Reagan’s administration, intelligent people were drawn to the Republican party (actually even making the average IQ of Republicans of that time higher than Democrats… which is the complete opposite now). I’m eager for the Republican party to destroy itself in its increasing radicalization because the quicker it does the quicker it can begin to return to sanity. I hope I live long enough to see a new conservatism rise out of the ashes.
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* As a note, I should add an additional category of critical conservatives. Similar to the libertarians and minarchists, there are the anarcho-capitalists who are critical of mainstream politics in general. For example, the anarcho-capitalist Stephan Molyneux makes criticisms using the exact same kind of data that is used by the liberal environmentalist Derrick Jensen. However, many anarcho-capitalists (like many rightwing libertarians) can tend to be more ideological than critical-minded… meaning their criticisms are extremely limited and biased. Anyways, it seems quite a few anarcho-capitalists are wary about being identified with conservatism and prefer to think of themselves as independents. In my opinion, the more moderate mainstream conservative-leaning independents (or independent-leaning conservatives) like Dean are maybe on average more intellectually respectable in their analyses (having less tendency towards extremes in their beliefs and ideas).
* As another note, I thought of some other conservatives I could add. I just watched Nader do an interview of Napolitano. The latter seemed to express what I’d consider genuine civil libertarianism. I’ve also heard John Stossel make a very lucid libertarian argument for legalization of drugs and as I recall he made that argument on Fox News. A third example is Shep Smith who is on Fox News as well. This makes me wonder to what extent Rupert Murdoch might genuinely believe in libertarian values or what libertarianism even means to someone with so much wealth and power. Anyways, these people (Napolitano, Stossel, and Smith) represent an authentic conservative impulse within mainstream conservatism, but still I wonder. Who listens to them? Who among the conservative leadership takes them seriously? It was interesting to see how critical Napolitano was of Republican politicians and judges. Does the intellectual rationality of Napolitano truly balance out the anti-intellectual radicalism of Glenn Beck? Between Napolitano and Beck, which one has more influence over the views of the average conservative? If I had to guess, I’d say Beck has had the most influence recently for sure. When people speak of conservatism as a movement, who exactly are the main representatives and leaders? The reason I wonder is because when I listen to someone like Napolitano I can’t help but think that certain of his conclusions would be more similar to the views of liberals than to the views of conservatives.
First they came for the communists,
