Social Order and Symbolic Conflation

Again and again, I return to the issue of conservatism. What or who defines it? How is or should it be defined? It’s endlessly mesmerizing, at least to my more liberal mind.

There are two typical answers to the question of conservatism’s definition.

First, (true) conservatives want to conserve.

This a nice notion, but doesn’t work out very well. Everyone, liberals included, want to conserve something as this is simply a facet of human nature. So, this doesn’t get at the core motivation of conservatives as a distinct group, movement, worldview or predisposition: What exactly do conservatives want to conserve? What don’t they want to conserve? And why? Its clear that many conservatives don’t have good answers, beyond largely ahistorical nostalgic fantasies or else abstract philosophizing/theologizing. In relation to American tradition (in the mainstream), many mainstream liberals have taken on the role of conserving the status quo and mainstream conservatives quite the opposite.

Second, (true) conservatives are traditionalist.

This is another nice notion that is equally problematic. There are many traditions, even within a single culture or society or political system. Heck, after several centuries, modern liberalism has become one of the most dominant and well established traditions in the world, a tradition that the United States was founded upon. This is why American ‘conservatives’ are classical liberals rather than classical conservatives. The British Tories were the classical conservatives that Americans sought independence from.

Conservatives do want to conserve something, but many things can be and have been latched onto. Furthermore, anything conserved, even if only in memory or imagination, becomes a tradition and is treated as such by conservatives. This obviously doesn’t clarify the matter. The conservative impulse, separate from the general conserving impulse, does have limits to what or else how it is applied.

Here is my preferred hypothesis. It won’t win awards for originality, but it makes sense of the evidence.

Conservatives value relatively stable, strict or even rigid social orders that are based on, justified by and maintained according to hierarchy and authority. Conservatives will seek to conserve any tradition thus deemed worthy or, failing that, seek to (re-)create a tradition that when established will be worthy of being conserved; both of these easily being conflated at least in rhetoric, hence the close tie between the traditionalist conservative and the reactionary conservative, the distinction as such being an academic exercise — I wonder if traditionalist and reactionary are just two stages in the life-cycle of conservatism, each inevitably leading back to the other.

I would add that, in this way, there is no ‘true’ conservatism since there is no fundamental content or inherent substance. Conservatism isn’t any single thing or set of things, but a preference/tendency in relating to things. For this reason, conservatives have no loyalty to tradition simply for the sake of it being tradition.

American conservatives, for example, have no inherent commitment to any given American tradition, although of course they are committed to a collective imagining of a tradition (a social and political narrative, an origin myth) that may or may not partly correspond to some period or aspect of history. American conservatives have no particular loyalty to the tradition of the Republican Party prior to the Southern Strategy nor loyalty to the European tradition of conservatism. Each generation and group of conservatives has re-imagined what is ‘true’ conservatism.

The world history of conservatism is immensely diverse, including everything from theocracy to monarchism, from fascism to republicanism. Even American socialists have grounded themselves in conservative traditions such as German communalism. Just within the limited spectrum of mainstream American politics, there are conservatives as polar opposite as evangelical states’ rights libertarians threatening secession and secular statist neocons using liberal rhetoric about spreading democracy around the world, two extremes that can’t be contained in any single consistent ideology.

Loyalty and consistency aren’t the issues.

A social order is perceived as worthy or unworthy not because of the social order itself, rather what that social order accomplishes or fails to accomplish. What is trying to be accomplished is that a worthy order will reward the worthy and punish the unworthy. Conservatives turned away from a monarchical system of feudal aristocracy not because it oppressively denied individual rights and liberty.  What Corey Robin points out is that conservatives saw the old social order as having become weak and so no longer able to maintain its own hierarchy and authority against opponents. Conservatives didn’t want to remove this kind of social order, but to offer a new and improved version. This required adapting to changing conditions which is how modern conservatives adopted classical liberalism in place of classical conservatism.

The rhetoric of conservatism is misleading. The purpose of conservative social order is first and foremost to defend and maintain conservative social order, i.e., hierarchical authority. The upholders and representatives of conservative social order don’t need to justify their reasons to social inferiors. They just have to keep their social inferiors in their place, thus maintaining conservative social order.

On this most basic level, conservatism is morally neutral or rather morally relativistic. No external objective standard can be used to measure the authenticity and merit of a social order in the mind of conservatives. It is a self-referential closed system. That is what conservatism does: closes down, tightens the ranks, guards the boundaries, etc. This is what makes it stable and dependable, strong enough to be its own moral standard (in the way the conservative God doesn’t need to justify his own divine laws and moral pronouncements; it is right, good and true because God says so, and you know he said so because that is what God put in his own holy book).

Any principle, belief or value put forth by a conservative is always symbolic. And every conservative symbol represents the same thing: conservative social order. An example I’ve used before is that of conservatives claiming to be pro-life. I’ve pointed out to conservatives that research has shown banning abortions doesn’t decrease and in some cases increases the rate of abortions, just illegal and more dangerous. If conservatives were primarily pro-life, this evidence would cause them to change their mind. Does it make them rethink? Of course not. Being pro-life is a symbolic position representing conservative social order in its role as overt moral order.

This is an opaquely symbolic way of thinking and speaking. The best way to defend the social order is by disguising it as something other or more than what it is. The moment the social order is clearly seen, it can be openly questioned and doubted. The social order has to be taken as a given of reality in order for it to have power to persuade and inspire. The symbol must become conflated with reality and this conflation is of prime importance, the very heart of conservatism.

I can’t begin to explain how immensely this fascinates me. There is power in this that, as I’ve said before, goes way beyond anything liberalism can accomplish (which is meant as a compliment of sorts). As long as the conflation stands unchallenged, liberalism is pathetically weak (a definite criticism coming from my inner left-winger).

Many liberals don’t understand this or are afraid to speak truth to power. When social order is weakened, all of society becomes threatened by the possibility of change. Only the most radical revolutionary will embrace the new and different without trepidation. Liberals want to loosen up the social order, but they don’t want to pull out the lynchpin. This is why liberals can be more conservative than even conservatives, moderating the extremes. The reason conservatives rule to the extent that they do so is because liberals allow them.

Social order is a strange thing. It would seem even stranger that conservatives take social order for granted more than do liberals. I suppose this is the case because for conservatives social order always has to largely play out on the level of unconsciousness.

None of this is meant directly as a criticism of conservatism. Conservatism can be used in the service of beneficial social orders just as easily with destructive social orders. The deal conservatives and liberals have is the following. Liberals won’t do an all out assault on the symbolic conflation that holds social order together and conservatives will incorporate liberalism into the social order so as to strengthen it. Whether this is a good deal, whether this is symbiosis or codependency (certainly not opposing ideologies in a simplistic sense) is another matter. I offer it just as an observation and analysis of how  society seems to operate.

So, it is all comes down to social order. That is what all of civilization is about. The precariousness of civilization helps me understand the mysterious and hidden nature of conservatism. I have a basic respect for the function it serves.

I’ll end as I began with some questions:

Could civilization operate differently? Or could such ways of operating serve a new kind of social order?

Change and Acceptance: A Liberal-Minded View

I wish I could forget about politics and political divisions. But regularly interacting with my conservative parents constantly reminds me of how different my liberal-minded view can be. And this causes me to think about politics in very personal terms. 

I keep coming back to some basic truths about conservatives and liberals along with other related differences. I was at the moment focused on the issue of understanding that is informed by these respective ideological worldviews and how this makes communication challenging. Certainly, communication with my parents can be challenging at times.

I’d like to think that I’m slowly gaining in wisdom or something approximating wisdom. Over time, it has become clear to me how there are positives and negatives to all psychological traits, especially as they manifest in terms of ideological worldviews. This has caused me to become increasingly accepting and forgiving… or at least that is how I’d like to be. I’ve been trying to learn to just feel the frustration and let it ride.

Most importantly, I have no choice but to accept my own limitations in dealing with the limitations of others. No matter what I identify as, no matter how I may shift from time to time, I’ll most likely forever remain centered in liberal-mindedness. At this point, it just feels like who I am and I can’t easily imagine myself otherwise. It would be nearly impossible for me to shift into the full mode of the conservative mindset, although I do have enough experience with and tendencies toward conservatism to make it not an entirely alien reality.

Here  is my frustration. Even with some understanding, the bridge between the two predispositions can seem insurpassable. I sometimes think this bothers the liberal-minded more for we can tend to be over-sensitive bleeding hearts who just want everyone to get along. The conservative-minded seem more inclined to just assume that the liberal-minded are so clueless as to never understand their worldview, thus communication being impossible and cooperation undesirable. This can be hard for the liberal-minded to accept. Polarized partisanship may inspire the conservative-minded and mobilize the conservative movement, but it instead tends to depress the liberal-minded and immobilize the liberal movement.

I’ve noticed how the conservative-minded are more likely to see this difference as a moral difference, specifically those who are moral versus those who are immoral or amoral. It’s the typical dualistic thinking, this or that, right or wrong. This is not unusually portrayed as a battle with the moral imperative to fight and win. For many conservative activists, this is seen as a cosmic war of good versus evil where victory must be sought at any cost. For the fundamentalist, one’s mortal soul and all of humanity is at risk. The enemy, even if not entirely evil, isn’t seen as a worthy equal and so compromise is a moral danger not to be risked. Every step toward liberalism is one step closer to Godless Communism or some such thing.

The liberal-minded, on the other hand, tend to take a more emotionally detached approach, whether psychological or philosophical (more detached, anyway, from such emotions as fear and hatred). This emphasizes differences without judging them in as absolute of terms, seeing both sides as potentially having something positive to contribute. If there is a moral danger to be feared, it is the divisiveness that makes cooperation toward a shared vision beyond all hope.

One side is fighting a battle or else guarding their territory in preparation for war while the other side is simply confused about how to respond. The former mentality, specifically when in this reactionary stance, isn’t very open to sitting down and talking. It is only when the fear response is dampened that liberal-minded can satisfy their own approach because only then are the conservative-minded willing to accept terms of truce.

Fear is the determining factor, for both sides. When the social atmosphere is fear-ridden, two things happen. First, the conservative-minded can become even more conservative-minded which means not just resistant to change but reactionary. And, second, the liberal-minded can become more conservative-minded as well which means leftism as a movement falters and splinters while leftists either become radicalized to the point of being excluded from respectable company and/or become defensive  of that which the conservative-minded are reacting against.

Fear is only good for dealing with narrowly-defined threats such as immediate attacks by known enemies, problems that are short-term situations that require quick response, or situations that are localized so as to allow them to be easily defined and isolated. Fear is the most reactionary of emotions. It focuses the mind and prepares the body for action.

This is what conservative-mindedness is all about. Conservative-mindedness is defined by being low on the trait ‘openness’ and high on the trait ‘conscientiousness’. This adds up to a sense of focus and control. Research shows that conservative-minded traits are useful for clearly defined tasks and situations. The conservative-minded make good surgeons for they can focus intently while ignoring all distractions. They make good lawyers for they find it easy to deal with clearly worded laws and tangible precedents. They make good businessmen because success is so much more straightforward with either one making a profit or not, all other external factors being insignificant if they don’t add to or subtract from the bottom line. And they make good soldiers and generals in their ability to act quickly and decisively.

All of this relates to fear, whether fear of death or loss or failure or whatever. Problems arise for the conservative-minded when the situation is vague or complex, hence when fear and hyper-focus is an inadequate or unhelpful response.

Because of this, the conservative-minded will only feel comfortable and confident in certain situations and so they will constantly seek to create a society that conforms to their predispositions. This is why conservatives would love to create a society that is built around capitalism, the military, and/or fundamentalism. Capitalism is particularly clear in our society for conservatives perceive it in Social Darwinian terms where they seek to eliminate or weaken nearly all safety nets and so where one is driven to succeed out of fear of what would happen otherwise. Loss of status can be worse than death for the conservative-minded (and it is a good way to enforce social order in general). And so it is the fear of loss of status that makes life meaningful to them for that is their measure of morality and self-worth. Confrontation with fear strengthens the conservative mind or else just exaggerates it.

The strengths of the conservative-minded are clear. In those situations where they excel, they can utterly defeat the less aggressive and focused liberal-minded. And the conservative-minded are talented at creating the conditions for their success (also the conditions for the failure of their opponents). But their success doesn’t always translate into the success for the society they come to dominate (for this larger democratic society includes many potential ‘opponents’, including competion amongst the conservative-minded in their attempts to enforce their various and even contradictory preferred social orders).

The conservative-minded, however, don’t see it this way for their focused mindset only allows them to see what they choose to focus upon, all else being unnecessary or unworthy. The complex and diverse world of the liberal-minded simply doesn’t exist for them (heck, even the diversity among the conservative-minded isn’t ever fully acknowledged). They only see an issue or problem when it comes into their focus which means when it is no longer possible to ignore. Issues like global warming and economic inequality are vastly complex and so they seem unreal to them, mere abstract fantasies of the liberal elite.

This is a conundrum for the liberal-minded. Whether or not the conservative-minded see it, the problems of global warming and economic inequality remain as the reality we all face. Not even the most conservative-minded can ignore these problems forever. However, decades or even generations can go by before the point comes when the conservative-minded can no longer ignore them.

Here is the wisdom I’ve come to. All that the liberal-minded can do is repeat the truth and restate the obvious, over and over again, continuously and patiently. There is nothing else to be done. The liberal-minded has to accept that the conservative-minded will eventually come around, hopefully before it is too late. Either they come around or they don’t, but only reality itself can eventually force anyone to shift their focus. This is the Taoist approach to politics. Swimming against the tide is pointless and tiring. It is wiser to save one’s strength in order to use it when it can make the most difference. Timing is everything. If the conditions are not right, no amount of effort can make a difference.

This conflict of predispositions and worldviews isn’t essentially a moral issue, as the conservative-minded tend to think. Nor is it necessarily an issue of educating the public or reframing public debates, as the liberal-minded tend to think. It might involve all of those factors, but social change happens for reasons we don’t always understand.

This is where the understanding of a trait spectrum is helpful. It is best to remember that no one is entirely conservative-minded or entirely liberal-minded. The present responses we see from either end of the spectrum are situation-dependent. As the world changes, people shift, predispositions shift, ideologies shift, whole paradigms shift, etc. It doesn’t matter if the conservative-minded react against it or the liberal-minded try to force the issue. Reality always wins out in the end and one can only hope that one is on the side of reality.

Culture As Agent of Social Change

I’ve become aware of a particular conflict that hides a deeper issue.

There are the partisans who often promote the view of voting for the lesser of two evils or else they promote the personality cult of a particular politician, the idea being that the right party or the right politician can save us from the problems or at least save us from these problems getting worse. The critics of this are often the right-wingers and left-wingers who instead propose particular ideologies or direct action tactics in the hope that change has to be forced from a more outside perspective.

I’m thinking both are wrong. What keeps things the way they are has to do with cultural factors that go much deeper than either party politics or ideological systems. So, what can change these problems must go deeper. I don’t know what that means, but what I sense is that parties and ideologies only barely touch the surface. Culture is hard to talk about and that is probably why it is often misunderstood and even more often ignored.

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to communicate by my use of the term ‘culture’. I’ve been studying the cultures of immigrants and regions in the US. It’s clear that it is fundamentally culture that has defined this country and it’s clear that it is fundamentally culture that has determined the events of history. But all of this is easier to see in hindsight. What is happening now in American culture? Where is it heading? How can it be shifted from within toward more positve ends?

 * * * *

I can imagine what some political activists would think of my thoughts here. There is a certain kind of political activist who would see this discussion of ‘culture’ as basically metaphysical speculation. For them, politics is about action, about making things happen, about results.

I don’t exactly disagree, but I was just wondering if intelligent and effective action might be possible. Political activists have been trying the same basic tactics for a long time and they keep getting the same lackluster results. Simply getting attention for a protest doesn’t accomplish a whole lot and neither does getting your favorite politician elected.

It seems to me that something is being missed in all these political maneuverings and manipulations. I wish I could explain this better. I sense this ‘cultural’ issue is the most centrally important aspect to politics and society in general, but I don’t know if most people would understand what I’m trying to get at.

Culture is like the air we breath. It can seem intangible for the reason we are almost incapable of lookiing at it objectively. We are in it and so we take it for granted.

Anytime there is a massive shift in a society, especially in terms of politics, there is always a shift of culture that precedes it, sometimes preceding it for decades or longer. Cutlure usually shifts slowly and imperceptibly, but occasionally like a fault line a massive earthquake can occur when there are major realignments.

Here is the core question: Are we merely victims of such over-arching cultural shifts or can we control them to a certain extent? If we are victims to these underlying cultural factors, then we are victims to all of society and any political action becomes mere blind fumbling. But how to convince people to take culture seriously? Everyone on some level probably knows culture matters and yet few people ever give it much thought. Unless this changes, we will continue to be victims.

 * * * *

Most people think of culture in terms of the groups we identify with because of similarities. Politicians are always playing off of our cultural prejudices, conservative politicians seeming to be particularly talented at this.

This is culture as ideological identity, as groupthink. This is culture as race (whites vs blacks, whites vs minorities), as origins (native-born vs foreigh-born), as ethnicity (European vs Asian), as religion (Christian vs Muslim, Protestant vs Catgholic), as region (North vs South, East Coast vs WEst Coast), etc. Or else added all together such as WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).

But this isn’t primarily what I’m talking about. This barely scratches the surface and oversimplifies even these superficial factors.

It’s true, as this view portrays, that culture relates to how we perceive ourselves and others in context of how we perceive our society. However, this just points to what we are aware of and only the elements that are obvious enough to be made into stereotypes. On the other hand, there is a more complex level of culture that underlies and shapes our perceptions, including our perceptions of cultural stereotypes.

As such, to change perception is to change everything. Our perceived choices and perceived actions would change. Our perceived relationships and perceived realities would change. We are all trapped in a reality tunnel or else many overlapping reality tunnels. We can’t see outside of a reality tunnel until we’ve shifted to a new rality tunnel and maybe not even then. To consider a shift of culture on this fundamental level is in a sense a metaphysical speculation, but it is metaphysical speculation that points toward metaphysical action, the shifting of our very sense of shared reality.

I’m speaking of cultural paradigms. What is the cultural paradigm that makes some particular social/political/economic system or lifestyle seem possible and desirable?

Socialism used to seem both possible and desirable to average Midwesterners earlier last century. In fact, it seemed so possible and desirable that a successful socialist government was created and maintained for decades in Milwaukee. But now average Midwesterners no longer think according to that cultural paradigm.

What changed and how? There was political oppression from the Cold War that destroyed that cultural paradigm and caused many of the defenders of it to become less vocal or less radical or else flee the country. However, the fundamental Northern European culture that made this cultural paradigm possible still exists and still functions to some degree. The social democracy of the Midwest is the remnant of this cultural paradigm. It is a seed that could again manifest as effective socialism once again. What is stopping it from doing so? There are people alive right now in Milwaukee who were alive when the socialists governed the city, some of these having been socialists themselves or somehow involved with the socialist government. What has become of this still living memory?

In desiring and seeking change, what are we missing or misunderstanding?

Midwest vs Coasts: history, culture & politics

Often in reading about politics, my Midwestern worldview can make me feel like I’m working from a slightly different context than mainstream culture. The mainstream media tends to put issues in terms of Northeastern Democrats versus Southern Republicans or else East Coast Establishment versus West Coast Libertarianism/Liberalism. The Midwest is none of these.

I was thinking about this last night when I was reading American Nations by Colin Woodard (which I came across in my recent research that began with an earlier post). Here is one of the passages that made me think about this (Kindle Locations 2962-3053):

“New Englanders headed west across the northern tier of the Northwest Territory, land-hungry settlers from the Midlands were pouring into the central Midwest. The Midlanders—a great many of them German speaking—carried their pluralistic culture into the Heartland, a place long since identified with neighborliness, family-centered progress, practical politics, and a distrust of big government. Spanning the north-central portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Greater Midlands spread through central and southern Iowa, northern Missouri, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and even northernmost Texas—an area many times greater than its original hearth on the shores of the Delaware Bay. Its settlements—a collection of mutually tolerant ethnic enclaves—served as a buffer between the intolerant, communitarian morality of Greater Yankeedom and the individualistic hedonism of Greater Appalachia, just as they had earlier on the eastern seaboard. New Englanders and Appalachian people often settled among them, but neither group’s values took hold. The Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, largely minding their own business. Few Midwestern Midlanders were Quakers, but they unconsciously carried aspects of William Penn’s vision to fruition.”

(Note: Here in Eastern Iowa, there are a fair number of Quakers. Offhand, I know of 3 Quaker churches and a Quaker school in the immediate area. Demographic maps show a relatively higher percentage of Quakers in the Midwest, particularly in Ohio, Indiana and Iowa; where I live, Johnson County, is only a county away from one of the concentrated Quaker communities in the US, Keokuk County. However, maybe this only increased after the early immigrants came to the region. I noticed a 1914 book about Quakers in Iowa which notes, “Although the Quakers have not been numerous in Iowa, the influence of their attitude toward life has been considerable in the history of the Commonwealth.” Maybe living near a concentrated population of Quakers biases my perception of the Midwest slightly.)

“Most Midlanders reached the region on the National Road, which guided their settlement to the Mississippi and beyond. Pennsylvania Germans did their best to replicate the towns they’d left behind. New Philadelphia, Ohio, was founded by a congregation of Moravians and soon attracted German-speaking Mennonites. In Ohio, Pennsylvania Dutch dominated a fifty-mile-wide belt of farms south of the Yankee Western Reserve in settlements called Berlin, Hanover, Dresden, Frankfort, Potsdam, Strasburg, or Winesburg. Amish and Dunkers founded Nazareth, Canaan, and Bethlehem. Pennsylvania Dutch barns and United Brethren churches sprang up amid tidy farmhouses and fields of wheat. From the 1830s this familiar cultural environment attracted huge numbers of immigrants directly from Germany who congregated in Cincinnati.1

“In Indiana the Midlander belt of settlement was narrower due to their discomfort with the Appalachian dominance over the territory’s affairs. Indiana’s Borderlanders called themselves Hoosiers, came from the backcountry of Kentucky and western Virginia, and were ambivalent about slavery. But to Yankees and Midlanders they might as well have come from the Deep South. “Avoid settling in those states where negro slavery prevails,” a Philadelphia newspaper advised would-be emigrants to the west. “Your children will be corrupted by their vices and the slave lords will never treat you like Christians or fellow citizens.” To settle in Yankee-dominated Michigan or Wisconsin, meanwhile, meant putting up with the New Englanders’ irritating desire to make everyone into a Yankee. Many Midlanders did ultimately put down roots there (Milwaukee would declare itself the “German capital of America”), but they had to expend time and energy resisting Yankee attempts to close their beer gardens on the Sabbath, to force English-only public schools on their children, and to stamp out their Germanness. In the Midland zone, foreigners, Catholics, and others found a society untroubled by diversity but skeptical of slave labor, warfare, and the cult of the individual.2″

(Note: My mom’s family who were Germans would be included in the above mentioned ‘Hoosiers’. They originally settled in Southern Indiana from Kentucky, but I don’t know how long they were in Kentucky. If they had only stopped in Kentucky on there way to Indiana, they might not have picked up as much of the Appalachian culture. However, living in Southern Indiana, they inevitably picked up some of that culture. In fact, my mom raised in Northern Indiana still to this day speaks with some of the Appalachian dialect that she apparently got from her family. Anyway, from what I know of my family on that side, it would seem they took on a fair amount of the Appalachian culture, beyond just dialect. My ancestors probably would have maintained more of their own German culture had they initially settled in a more Northern or more Western region of the Midlands. Yankee culture tried to enforce assimilation, but the Scots-Irish of Appalachia weren’t known for being friendly to other cultures either.)

“Midlanders settled a swath of the north-central area of Illinois, anchored by the border cities of Chicago and St. Louis. Northern Missouri became a Midland stronghold as well, with St. Louis supporting two German-language daily newspapers by 1845. Bavarian immigrant George Schneider founded the Bavarian Brewery there in 1852, selling it to Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch a few years later. Continued immigration from Germany enabled Midland civilization to dominate the American Heartland despite competition from aggressive Yankees and Borderlanders. By midcentury, German immigrants were arriving by riverboat in St. Louis and from there fanning out across northern Missouri and the eastern prairies. Railroads followed, carrying immigrants from Europe and the coastal Midlands alike.3

“Germans had many reasons to abandon central Europe, where forty independent German states were squabbling over the great issues raised by the French Revolution: the legitimacy of feudalism, monarchies, and an economic system in which most people lived in dire poverty. Efforts to unify the region into a single state under a representative government failed in 1848, and many Germans looked to escape the military autocracy that followed. Even before the collapse of the so-called ’48 Revolution, liberals had wished for a place where they could build a New Germany, a model for the democratic, egalitarian society they had hoped their own splintered nation could become. “The foundations of a new and free Germany in the great north American republic can be laid by us,” the leader of one German colonization expedition to the American Midwest told his followers in 1833. “We may in at least one of the American territories create a state that is German from its foundations up, in which all those to whom the future here at home may seem . . . intolerable, can find refuge.” This and other expeditions were drawn to northern Missouri by the writings of Prussian-born resident Gottfried Duden, who extolled the region as a ready-made utopia. They were further encouraged by the new German Society of Philadelphia, which sought to found “a New Germany” in the west as “a secure refuge for ourselves, our children, and our descendants.” As the United States headed to the brink of civil war in the late 1850s, two leading German political analysts predicted the union would break into a number of independent states, some “under German rule.” These ideas are probably not what ultimately motivated the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans who actually made the move to the American Midlands, but they did provide the means for many of them to get there, in the form of useful information, organized emigration societies, and political assistance. No state would ever come close to being dominated by the German-born—Wisconsin stalled at 16 percent in 1860—but the 1830–1860 exodus from the Fatherland ensured that the diverse and tolerant Midlander civilization would come to dominate the American Heartland.4

“The flow of Quaker migrants was much smaller, but they were drawn to the Midland Midwest for similar reasons. In the early nineteenth century, Friends still sought to separate themselves from the world, and many found it harder and harder to do so on the densely populated eastern seaboard. During the course of the century, a number of Quaker enclaves outside of the Midlands relocated to Ohio and Central Indiana. Disgusted by slavery, century-old Quaker communities abandoned Tidewater and the Deep South. Indiana eclipsed Philadelphia as the center of North American Quakers in the 1850s. To this day, Richmond, Indiana, is second only to the City of Brotherly Love in total Quaker population. Nestled among communities of Germans, Scots-Irish, English Methodists, Moravians, Amish, and others, the Quakers had found a cultural landscape almost identical to that of southeastern Pennsylvania.5

“Like the Yankee Midwest, the Greater Midlands was settled by groups of families who had been neighbors on the eastern seaboard or in Europe. Unlike Yankees, they generally weren’t interested in assimilating people in neighboring communities, let alone in entire states. As in the Delaware Valley, individual towns were often dominated by a particular ethnic group, but counties tended to be pluralistic. Midwestern towns took their gridiron street plans from Pennsylvania precedents. The Germans set the tone, generally buying land with the intent to build lasting family homesteads rather than as speculative investments. They sought a permanent, organic connection to their land, taking unusual care to ensure its long-term productivity through soil and forest conservation measures first perfected on the tiny farm plots of central Europe. Whether arriving from Europe or Pennsylvania, they built their homes from stone whenever possible, as it was more durable than the wood used by the Yankees or Appalachian people.6

“Scholars have observed that the Germans insisted on entering the American melting pot collectively, on their own terms, and bearing ingredients they felt the country was lacking. Germans arriving from Europe usually had a higher standard of education, craftsmanship, and farming knowledge than most of their American neighbors, whom they found grasping and uncultured. “Americans are in their regard for art half-barbarian,” immigrant Gustave Koerner remarked in 1834, “and their taste is not much better than that of the Indian aborigines, who stick metal rings through their noses.” The Germans avoided assimilating, using their language in schools and newspapers and almost exclusively marrying other Germans as late as the 1880s. In a country rushing madly toward the frontier, the Germans distinguished themselves by their emphasis on stable, permanent, rooted communities, where families would work the same piece of land for generations. This rootedness would be perhaps their most lasting contribution to the culture of the Midlands and, by extension, the American Midwest.7″

(Note: The above is what I had in mind when I was writing yesterday my post Radicals & Reformers of Indiana. In that post, I was discussing the revisionist history that claims assimilation was the norm prior to the multiculturalism of 20th century progressivism. In reality, America was in many ways more culturally diverse and less culturally assimilated in the 19th century than it is today.)

“The people of the Midland Midwest had political values that distinguished the region from both the Yankee upper Midwest and the Appalachian lower Midwest. Midland areas resisted Yankee cultural imperialism and thus voted against the new Yankee-controlled political vehicle that emerged in the 1850s: the Republican Party. Midlanders did not wish to create a homogeneous nation: Quakers championed religious freedom, at least for Christians; new British immigrants were coming for economic opportunity, not to create an ideal Calvinist republic; Germans were accustomed to living among people of different religions. While these and other groups settling in the Midlands zone may have disliked and disagreed with one another, none sought to rule or assimilate the others beyond the town or neighborhood level. All rejected the Yankee efforts to do so.

(Note: Multiculturalism is and always has been the culture of the Midland Midwest.)

“As a result, throughout the 1850s a majority of Midlanders supported the anti-Yankee Democratic Party, which, at the time, was the party of the Deep South, Tidewater, and immigrants, especially Catholics. Democrats in this era rejected the notion that governments had a moral mission to better society, either through assimilating minorities or eliminating slavery. People—whether Deep Southern slave lords or the impoverished Irish Catholic immigrants of Boston—should be left to go about their business as they wished.

“But at the end of the 1850s this allegiance to the Democrats began to change as tensions built over the extension of slavery to Missouri, Kansas, and other new states and territories. Midland opinion began to splinter along doctrinal lines. Religious groups whose beliefs emphasized the need to redeem the world through good works, moral reforms, or utopian experiments found common ground with the Yankees, first on slavery, and later on efforts to curb alcoholism, blasphemous speech, and antisocial behaviors; this led Dutch Calvinists, German Sectarians, Swedish Lutherans, Northern Methodists, Free Will Baptists, and General Synod German Lutherans to embrace the Republican Party. People whose religious beliefs did not emphasize—or actively discouraged—efforts to make the present world holy stuck with the laissez-faire Democrats: Confessional German Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Southern Methodists. Groups occupying the middle ground on these issues (Anglicans, the Disciples of Christ) were split.8

“The end result was characteristically Midland: a large region of swing voters whose support could make or break nearly every future federal coalition around any given issue. On the eve of the Civil War, slavery would push a narrow majority of Midlanders into the Republican camp. Careful forensic analysis of the 1860 presidential vote by late twentieth-century political scientists has shown that this shift in Midlander opinion—particularly among Germans—tipped Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana into Abraham Lincoln’s column, giving him control of the White House. Defeated on the federal stage by the defection of the Midland Midwest, the Deep South would move to secede almost immediately.9″

My Mom’s family is mostly German-Americans who came through the Appalachian country of Kentucky and finally settled in Indiana (interestingly, Abraham Lincoln’s family also went from Kentucky to Indiana where he spent most of his childhood, the reason given for the move was partly because of the slavery issue, Kentucky being a slave state and Indiana a non-slave state; by the way, Lincoln had a personal and political connection to the utopian socialist New Harmony community that was located near the area where Lincoln’s family and my family lived; also, like Paine who inspired him, Lincoln had family ties to Quakerism and, like Paine, sought to self-educate himself as was encouraged in the Quaker tradition). My mom’s family seems to have a bit more of what people think of as the Scots-Irish culture (not known for tendencies toward socialism and self-education), but I was born in the Midlands of German-American Ohio and raised in the Midlands of various states with Iowa as my home state. Both the Midlands Midwest and Appalachia have cultures that mistrust big government, although for different reasons, the former because of a focus on local communities (local governance and civic mindedness) and the latter because of a focus on individualism and a disinterest in any collective organization beyond kinship.

The Midlands has never easily fit into the categories of Southern aristocratic conservatism or Northeastern paternalistic liberalism. Certainly, the Northeast did add a certain flavor to Midwestern culture, especially with some of the New England type of college towns that can be found as far as Iowa. However, the Midwest had to deal with multiculturalism in a way that many other regions of the country didn’t have to deal with. The closest parallel might be parts of the West Coast which makes sense considering many Midwesterners moved to the West Coast during the Dust Bowl years, thus giving to the West Coast its Standard American English. The Midwest shares with the Northeast and the West Coast a love of multiculturalism, although the Midwest gives a very different spin to it.

Midwesterners are liberal in this sense, but this liberalism isn’t always perceived by the rest of the country. Midwesterners are so laidback and not generally outspoken in politics. Texans and other Southerners may speak of live and let live, but Midwesterners genuinely live this motto to a greater extent. Many Americans outside of the Midwest might find it odd how radicaly left-wing the Midwestern states can be at times. We have high union membership, we have some states with same-sex marriage or same-sex union rights, and we have a history of socialism.

Eugene V. Debs, one of the most influential American socialists, was born and raised in Indiana. We also had many socialists communities starting in the 19th century through the 20th century, including New Harmony in Southern Indiana around the time my family moved into that area and including decades of Sewer Socialist mayors in Milwaukee. Big business and big government oppression led many Midwestern socialists to flee to Canada, but even to this day there are successful socialist communities such as Eastwind which is located in the lower Midwest. Despite the decline of overt socialism, social democracy which is closely allied with socialism continues to reign as the dominant political system of the Midwest. My home of Iowa City is a perfect example of social democracy in action.

The following is another section from the same book (Kindle Locations 3799-3819):

“Despite a long history of abolitionist sentiment, the Midlands had been ambivalent about Southern secession prior to the attack on Sumter. The Quaker/Anabaptist commitment to pacifism trumped moral qualms about slavery. Newspapers and politicians from Midland areas of Pennsylvania advocated allowing the Deep South to secede peacefully. Midland-controlled northern Delaware found itself at odds with the Tidewater-dominated south of the state, with some fearing violence might break out between the sections. Midland southern New Jersey had no intention of joining a slave-trading Gotham city-state, even if northern Jersey did.

“In the 1860 presidential election the Midlands voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, except for northern Maryland and Delaware, where he did not appear on the ballot. (In those places, Midlanders voted for the moderate Bell instead.) Lincoln easily won most of the Midland Midwest from central Ohio to southern Iowa, tipping Illinois and Indiana into his column. While Midlanders voted with their Yankee neighbors, they had no desire to be governed by them. Faced with the possibility of a national dissolution, most Midland political and opinion leaders hoped to join the Appalachian-controlled states to create a Central Confederacy stretching from New Jersey to Arkansas. The proposed nation would serve as a neutral buffer area between Yankeedom and the Deep South, preventing the antagonists from going to war with each other. John Pendleton Kennedy, a Baltimore publisher and former congressman, championed this “Confederacy of Border States,” which opposed both the Deep South’s program of expansion by conquest and the Yankee plans to preserve the Union by force. It was, he argued, the “natural and appropriate medium through which the settlement of all differences is eventually to be obtained.” Maryland’s governor, Thomas Hicks, saw merit in the proposal, which could preserve the peace in a state split between Midland, Appalachian, and Tidewater sections; he corresponded with governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, and Missouri (all of which had substantial Midland sections) plus New York and Virginia to lay the groundwork for such an alliance should the Union break up.13

“But the Deep South lost all Midland support after Sumter. In Philadelphia, Easton, and West Chester—Pennsylvania communities that had previously been centers of secessionist sympathy—mobs destroyed pro-Southern newspaper offices, drove pro-Southern politicians from their homes, assaulted secessionists in the streets, and forced homes and businesses to display Union flags. In Maryland the Central Confederacy proposal became obsolete overnight; Midland and Appalachian sections rallied to the Union, Tidewater ones to the Southern Confederacy. Their flag attacked, Midland sections of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri threw in their lot with the Yankees.14″

Isn’t that interesting?

Imagine if a Central Confederacy had formed. If the South had resisted turning to violence, the Midland Midwest (and upper Appalachia) wouldn’t have turned to fight with the Northeast in defense of the Union. Also, if the South hadn’t tried to force its slaveholding aristocracy onto the rest of the country (through undemocratically forcing slavery onto new states and by forcing non-slave states to submit to the power and authority of slave states), most Americans in the rest of the country would have been fine with leaving Southerners alone. It was force, oppression and violence that Midlanders and Borderlanders refused to accept from the South. It was the principle of it that bothered these Americans. If the North had first turned to violence in a similar manner, they very well might have gone to the defense of the South.

This is why it is so important for American presidential campaigns to begin in Iowa, in the Heartland. To win the heart of America usually means to win the entire country or at least to win the popular vote. Republicans try to look good in Iowa despite the fact that Iowa in recent history usually goes to Democrats.

I don’t know if that clarifies what I was stated at the beginning of this post. I’m a Midwesterner in my outlook on life. When I come across discussions about politics, especially when it involves those on the far right or far left, I feel like my own understanding is ignored.

I don’t think it is intentional. It’s simply that most Americans are from different regions than I am from. The most densely populated regions are on or near the coasts (West and East, Northeast and Deep South), and it is these regions where most political extremists are found. If I try to join discussions with such people, I feel like I have to translate my own views into their political terms and their social context. I realize that I understand them better than they understand me. As a member of fly-over territory, I constantly am barraged by the mainstream media that comes from the coasts. Those on the coasts, however, are mostly unaware of Midwestern media and hence unaware of the Midwest in general. Sadly, because of coastal dominance, even average Midwesterners have become increasingly uninformed and misinformed about the history, culture and politics of the Midwest.

In some ways, I think the Midwest is more radical than any other region of the US. It is radical because it is something entirely different, something that challenges the very notion of what this country is, what this country has been and could become. The Midwest is largely the creation of cultures from Northern Europe such as Germany. This Northern European culture still remains in the Midwest. Like Northern Europe, the Midwest has low economic inequality and low rates of social problems. Maybe it is time for average Americans to stop defining themselves according to the worldview of coastal elites.

 * * * *

After writing the above, I realized I had forgotten about one issue that motivated my thinking in this direction. I was reading an interview/discussion and a guest post over at SKEPOET’s blog. In both, the issue of regions came up, although only in terms of comparing countries. In the first one linked, one particular section of the discussion stood out:

Keith418:  [ . . . ] I don’t see a criticism of the managed society developing on the right or on the left. Instead, people pick vaguely defined managerial forces they wish to see prevail, but the structure and core operating beliefs of these experts is seldom acknowledged or challenged. Many people on the left just want more humane and caring management – which is quite a different demand from that of the people themselves being allowed to make the most important decisions that effect their lives. There are those on the paleocon right who evidence a kind of cranky antipathy towards the managerial elites, but these folks still don’t seem truly ready to abandon the technological society these same trained experts have provided for them. The neocon right has always cultivated its own managers and think tanks and has always been quite ready to enjoy what a “big government” made of empowered managers can provided.  For both the left and the right, taking power back from those they have ceded it to will take effort and energy. Who is ready to start that process and what sacrifices will they make to get there? The alternative is just to insist on better management – and not to attack and question the power and role of the managers at all.

He does make a fair point here, but such generalizations can be problematic. Instead of just comparing countries or international cultures, I was wondering if more insight might be gained by a more fine-tuned analysis of the regions within the US (and within other countries). If we don’t look in detail at how we got here, how can we speak of where we are going and where we might end up?

The ideal of a society managed by an elite has tended to be more of a coastal phenomenon. In the Midwest, there is the ideal of managing at the local level of communities where there can be a balance between a “more humane and caring management” and “the people themselves being allowed to make the most important decisions that effect their lives”. The most notable example of this balance is that of the Milwaukee Sewer Socialists.

We ignore this cultural tradition and its future potential at our own peril. Instead of looking outside for rupture from the present system, why not look inward for the native traditions that can erupt naturally as part of the culture? If we want to avoid technocrats, then any revolution must arise naturally rather than being externally foced upon the population.

Skepoet: Would you say that right and left are largely irrelevant positions?

Keith418:  Well, even if I did, what would be gained? Why do people still cling to these terms and think and act as if they were, indeed, still profoundly meaningful? Since the ’60s – I’m thinking of Karl Hess and even before him – many have tried to point out differing, and more determining and accurate kinds of dichotomies. Centralized vs. decentralized approaches, authoritarian vs. individualistic choices, top-down vs. bottom up styles. Why, after all this time, do people keep using “left and right”? What is concealed, what unrevealed truth is carried in these terms that continues to prevent their exhaustion?

Maybe we cling to these terms because what needs to be resolved is at the ground level of culture rather than in the heavenly sphere of ideas. The devil is in the details, not in the abstractions. Likewise, to borrow a phrase from Philip K. Dick, God is in the garbage. The real fight is in the dirt and muck of local culture. That is the only place ideological conflict can be fundamentally resolved. As former neocon Francis Fukuyama came to understand, healthy institutions must arise from within a culture as part of the local traditions and knowledge of communities.

Skepoet: What do you think remains unresolved at the core of the idea of left and right then as the fact that categories do not seem to leave us would indicate?   In my mind, when categories won’t go away despite the existence of more precise semantic categories, there is something unresolved at the core of the idea. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I suspect you approach this similarly, although it may be for different reasons.

Keith418: Well, what are the origin of the terms? They go back to the days of the French Revolution. What remains unresolved from that point? What questions were asked then that still haven’t been answered – and which our political definition still, somehow, entail? [ . . . ]

To me, these terms represent differing sides on the nature of the dream of shared human life, the great motivating metaphysical dream that floats above us and lives through us as we seek to create a world for ourselves.

Maybe so. I’m not unfamiliar with nor uninterested in such metaphysical perspective. However, for my thinking at the moment, I feel drawn to ground these metaphysical dreams in worldly particulars.

Metaphysical dreams don’t just float. They are more like the mist hovering along the ground drenching the world with its wetness, condensing into water that feeds life and then evaporating once again. Such mist follows closely the geography of hills and hollows, obscuring the world beyond the immediate place we stand even as it gives form to the air we breathe.

Do Politicians Racially Discriminate against Constituents?

Here is an example of how racial prejudice persists. Racism is institutionalized because institutions made by and operated by people. People make racist decisions not necessarily because they are overt racists but because most prejudices operate below conscious thought.

One thing that surprised me a bit is that racism existed similarly among both blacks and whites. Black politicians are also racially biased toward perceived black email senders. I’m not surprised that blacks are racist just like whites, but I am surprised that the racism operates the same way. I’ve seen other research that shows, in courts, both white and black jurors are more biased against black defendants. So, apparently context matters in how racism manifests.

Do Politicians Racially Discriminate against
Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators
Short Title: Do politicians racially discriminate?
Daniel M. Butler, David E. Broockman

Abstract
We use a field experiment to investigate whether race affects how responsive state legislators are
to requests for help with registering to vote. In an email sent to each legislator, we randomized
whether a putatively black or white alias was used and whether the email signaled the sender’s
partisan preference. Overall, we find that putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We
explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the
legislators’ own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated
even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot
completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white
legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority
legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias. Implications for the
study of race and politics in the United States are discusse

Political Labels – Meaningless? Divisive?

I keep coming across the problem with political labels. I’m actually a fan of labels when they are used to accurately represent fundamental differences, but too often that isn’t how they are used. I probably don’t have much hope to disentangle that which has been intentionally tangled. Still, I can at least explain my own understanding of the entanglement.

First, there is a difference between European and American political histories. In Europe, conservatism has traditionally been supportive of government. In America, conservatism opposed the government because the government was founded on a liberal vision. So, American conservatism is radicalized and contradicts traditional conservatism. To speak of the conservative tradition in America is to speak of an idiosyncratic tradition. The American conservative tradition isn’t traditionally conservative. It’s more complex than that, but there is a basic truth to this explanation.

Second, there is a difference between mainstream politics and majority public opinion. America was inspired by a vision of populist liberalism, but the founding fathers were mistrusting of this vision and so they created a new entrenched ruling elite (rich white males, landed aristocracy, plutocratic owner class). So, American politics has an inherent conflict. The original vision that inspired the American Revolution has yet to be fulfilled. This puts conservatives in a weird position when they try to defend the American tradition. Are they defending the radically liberal vision or are they defending the ruling elite? In some sense, the two are so mixed that they can’t easily be separated. The founding fathers were liberal for their day and yet socially conservative compared to present society, especially in their favoring a hierarchical society built on slavery where most citizens are disenfranchised from voting and holding political office.

Third, about a century ago through lies and deception corporations gained the legal rights of personhood. At that time, there was a populist revolt against the capitalist oligarchy. But it didn’t last as the ruling elite quickly destroyed it and co-opted the rhetoric. With corporate personhood, the founding father’s plutocracy was turned into a corporatocracy. Yet it’s a corporatocracy that retains the external elements of America’s social democracy. Corporatocracy is what Ike was warning about when he spoke of the Military-Industrial Complex. The 20th century has been the history of that warning not being heeded. The result is that the entire mainstream political spectrum has been pushed toward the right (toward a fiscal conservatism defined by the plutocratic ruling class of business owners, CEOs, bankers, investors, lobbyists, and corporatist politicians).

Fourth, there used to be a left-wing and a right-wing in both parties. This changed when the entire country had a political switch over the past half century or so. The Democratic Party used to be strong in the South, but is now strong in the North. However, the Democratic Party still is strong with poor, minorities, and other disenfranchised demographics even in the South. And the Democratic Party has maintained both a left-wing and a right-wing (Democrats are almost equally divided between those who identify as liberals, conservatives, and moderates). The Republicans were the party of Lincoln, the leader of the Northern Aggression who forced the South to end slavery. Republicans were the party that defended government instead of attacking it. Republicans were called that because they believed in the ‘republic’ which is the government. Earlier in the 20th century, there were still many progressive Republicans like Eisenhower. But there was a purging of the left-wing of the GOP which has caused the conservative movement to become radicalized toward the far right, specifically the far right of social conservatives. This radicalization has, as research has shown, led the conservative movement to become strongly aligned with right-wing authoritarians (a specific label with a specific definition as used in research).

All of this together has led Americans to have a very confused sense of politics.

When polled: If Americans are given a choice between identifying as liberal, conservative or moderate, the majority chooses moderate. If Americans are only given a choice between liberal or conservative, the majority chooses conservative. However, when asked about specific political positions and policies, liberals and moderates are largely in agreement. What usually is defined as ‘liberal’ positions are supported by a majority of Americans.

So, there is an apparent contradiction between what Americans label themselves as and what Americans actually support. This is because for decades the word ‘liberal’ has been portrayed in very negative terms which the American public has internalized. Mainstream politicians and media pundits have increasingly portrayed liberalism as the far left which is obviously not the case since moderates and the majority agree with liberals. The political spectrum has been pushed so far to the right that the far left is almost entirely excluded from public debate. The vacuum left from the banishment of left-wingers has forced moderate liberals to fill that position on the left end of the spectrum.

The political center in Washington isn’t the political center of the American public. Most Americans are moderates, but most politicians are polarized in their rhetoric. Also, most activists are polarized as well. This leaves a moderate silent majority which is in fact the liberal silent majority. Most liberals are probably so silent because they don’t even know they are liberals.

On top of that, the majority of Americans don’t vote because America has a history of disenfranchising the masses (which was intentionally created by the founding fathers). Conservatives, like the founding fathers, don’t trust the masses and are suspicious of democracy because it gives power to the masses. The silent majority isn’t just silent but silenced. Our political system is technically a democracy (however imperfect and corrupt), but even admitting this fact is a concession conservatives are unwilling to make. Conservatives will say that we live in a republic, not a democracy. I find that funny since there is no inherent conflict between the two. Yes, we are a republic AND we are democracy. Anyway, there is nothing inherently good about a republic. China is a republic.

A further confusion is that many Americans, especially among conservatives, don’t understand the difference between a liberal, a socialist, a communist, and a fascist. It’s all one and the same to them. As I’ve already pointed out, the contemporary American liberal is actually a moderate and, I would add, a small ‘r’ republican (in that they support our republican government). Beyond that, a socialist isn’t a communist isn’t a fascist. Socialism is a broad category which gives power to individuals and to communities of individuals. To varying degrees, socialism can be found in many churches, local organizations, unions, etc. Communism and fascism, on the other hand, are specifically about governments. A communist government owns the means of production. And a fascist government is controlled by those who own the means of production. But the distinction is often blurred. For example, the Nazis were fascists who used socialism to label themselves while killing and imprisoning socialists as well as communists. If you were a socialist being killed or imprisoned by Nazis, you wouldn’t be comforted by the fact that Nazis labeled themselves as ‘socialists’.

Yet another confusion, especially among conservatives, is that libertarianism and classical liberalism is true conservatism. Now, that is a confusion of labels worthy of a propagandist. The original libertarians and classical liberals were radically liberal and not conservative in any sense. Some of them thought free markets were potentially beneficial, but they were also very wary of capitalism not constrained by the morality of public good. The first libertarians were labor movement socialists (which makes it all the more ironic that most self-identified libertarians today are mostly from the privileged upper class). The godfather of American libertarianism, Henry David Thoreau, criticized the capitalism of his day which is the very same 19th century capitalism that right-libertarians today like to romanticize. The original vision of America was described by Thomas Paine who was a classical liberal of the bleeding heart liberal variety. Even so, left-libertarians like Thoreau and radical liberals like Paine are today so far to the left that they are no longer even included on the political spectrum. Even militant secessionists get more media attention and mainstream respectability. Washington politicians are simply being good conservatives when they speak about overthrowing the government, but when a moderate liberal defends the moral justification of the government they get labeled as a far left socialist.

The confusions abound. Many people think of America as a Christian nation, but only a minority of Americans regularly attend church and atheists know more about the Bible than most who claim to be Christian. Republicans use fiscal conservatism as rhetoric, but when asked it’s self-identified liberals who state the most interest in balancing the budget. Tea Party supporters and many right-libertarians idolize the constitution, but some of these people have proposed repealing the 14th amendment just because they don’t like immigrants and they’ve sought to take away the rights from the working class by busting unions. It’s hard to know what to make of all this.

Even though I think of myself as a liberal, I don’t mean to just blame conservatives. When I read about traditional conservatism, I find elements of it quite appealing. I’ve always been mistrusting of radicalism and not just because the radicalism of American conservatives. I’m like Paine in that I want to believe in our democratic government. Paine would be disappointed to see our country becoming ever more fascist, but he would be quite uplifted by the fact that the government finally ended slavery which he wanted the government to do right from the beginning. I want to believe in America, including the government. In this sense, I’m ‘conservative’. But being this kind of a ‘conservative’ in America means that you’ll likely feel more at home with those who identify as ‘liberals’. As such, I praise conservatism even as I criticize conservatives.

I had no grand purpose in analyzing all these labels. I just wanted to explain my own understanding. I keep hearing the same muddled labels being argued about… which is annoying. I also find it annoying when someone claims the labels are meaningless, that the left/right dichotomy was created to divide and conquer. My problem is most people who think labels are meaningless seem to do so because of ignorance about the history of those labels. Yes, those in power do use tactics of divide and conquer, but they also use tactics of keeping the public so ignorant that they can’t make intelligent distinctions.

I feel harshly judgmental (which isn’t unusual for me), but that isn’t the point. Maybe those who think the labels have become meaningless are right. I don’t know if it matters. The labels themselves, of course, are just words. What matters is that which words are intended to represent. From my perspective, the loss of meaningful labels is the loss of meaningful discussion. What these labels represent is history. There is something sad about the collective forgetting of our collective past.

- – -

After writing the above, I had some further thoughts (surprise, surprise). I want to expand on a few points I made and maybe offer some corrections or clarifications.

I think the confusion of politics has always existed in America. It goes beyond the radicalization and polarization of the 20th century.

I was particularly thinking about political groups such as right-libertarians, objectivists, and anarcho-capitalists. I often consider these groups to be ‘conservative’ in the broad sense. Certainly, they are right-wingers. It makes me wonder what is the relation between conservatives and right-wingers. As I already pointed out, liberals and left-wingers often have very little in common. Many left-wingers choose not to identify as ‘liberals’ and many self-identified liberals disavow left-wingers. I’ve noticed similar dynamic can be found between right-wingers and conservatives (which, to an outsider like me, often appears as a conflict between those who emphasize fiscal conservatism and those who emphasize social conservatism).

The confusion in this area has two main aspects.

1. Those on the right tend to conflate liberals and left-wingers and those on the left tend to conflate conservatives and right-wingers.
2. If you go far enough to the right or left, you often end up around the same place: left-libertarians and right-libertarians, anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-capitalists, etc.

Both the left-wing and right-wing in America have some origins in classical liberalism (because America has its origins in classical liberalism). My complaint is that the right-wingers often want to claim classical liberalism for themselves. I’ve argued that classical liberalism has more in common with the left than the right. Ignoring the two wings, it’s obvious that liberalism in general has its origins in classical liberalism, although much has changed since the time of classical liberalism. On the other hand, one would have to make a major stretch to argue that contemporary conservatism overall has much to do with classical liberalism. Right-wingers make a simple mistake in assuming that classical liberalism automatically means minarchism or anti-statism. The early classical liberals, prior to the American and French revolutions, were against the governments of the time because those governments were monarchies with state-sanctioned religions. But they weren’t against all government in principle. For damned sure, classical liberalism isn’t just another name for anarchism.

That said, I must admit that I’m not an expert on classical liberalism. I think some right-wing ideologies have a case for their origins in classical liberalism, but they don’t have a case for sole possession of classical liberalism nor as the rightful inheritors, the official standard-bearers of all classical liberalism. When they attempt to make this argument, they discredit themselves with their own arrogant self-righteousness. I’m willing to share classical liberalism with them, but I won’t allow them to eliminate the liberalism from classical liberalism.

Here is what I see as the source of the confusion about classical liberalism. I’ve noticed two diverging tendencies within the founding generation of America. Both were liberal relative to the monarchy they were collectively opposing, but one was more liberal than the other. Some of the founders wanted a ruling elite based class, education and property. These founders were successful in implementing this vision to varying degrees in federal and state laws. Opposing them, were those who agreed with Paine which largely included those not a part of the ruling elite (Paine himself was born into the working class). Paine’s vision inspired the American Revolution, but was shoved to the side once the American ruling elite was freed from the British ruling elite. Paine was a radical liberal in the tradition of social democracy and so that meant that Paine was a classical liberal who didn’t hate government. He realized that a democratic government was the only protection from a new ruling elite. And many of the other founders feared democracy because they realized it limited their own power as the ruling elite while empowering the average person (i.e., the ‘mob’).

So, the right-winger today who self-identifies as a classical liberal tends to be in the American tradition of a capitalist ruling elite (plutocracy) that opposes other ruling elites (such as monarchies and often government in general) while simultaneously opposing the vast majority of citizens who potentially could oppose their own position of ruling elite. They see themselves as part of a meritocracy and so believe that they, unlike others, have earned their position as the ruling elite. However, it’s a bit misguided to call this classical liberalism. Classical just generally refers to the liberalism prior to the 20th century. Paine absolutely was a classical liberal. He was definitely liberal for politics of his day and his vision is still radically liberal by today’s standards. The right-wing founders were liberal in wanting to replace a monarchy with a republic, but they were conservative in wanting to maintain a ruling elite. I find it almost disingenous to call people classical liberals who feared giving people basic freedom and human rights. Paine wanted everyone to be absolutely and equally free, but many of the founders didn’t want to end slavery or give voting rights to all citizens because they believed maintaining their own freedom necessitated limiting the freedom of others. That is a very distorted and uninspiring notion of classical liberalism.

Many right-wing libertarians to this day find themselves in this conundrum of simultaneously praising and fearing freedom. Many right-wing libertarians and minarchists are fine with any constraints on freedom that help maintain their position of power and the social order that upholds it (e.g., strong border control and military). They like capitalism (or rather their version of big business corporatism) even if it means (or because it means) undermining democracy and disempowering those of the lower classes (e.g., union busting, Citizens United). This attitude may have elements of classical liberalism in terms of rhetoric, but it is also a response of wanting to deny the unadulterated and unrestrained vision of classical liberalism as proposed by Paine. Even though it seemed relatively liberal a couple centuries ago, this right-wing ‘classical liberalism’ is extremely conservative compared to the present leftwing ideologies that seek to free and empower all people of all classes and races. I prefer my classical liberalism taken straight and not watered down.

Unlike most of the founders, Paine was a genuine progressive. It is interesting to note that progressivism isn’t always or entirely aligned with big government and with liberalism. Some of the founders who wanted to maintain the status quo of a ruling elite (meaning they were afraid of Paine’s populist progressivism) were for that reason also for having a strong central government. Paine didn’t disagree with having a strong central government, but he wanted it to be balanced by localized grassroots democracy. The ideal of progressivism existed at the beginning of America’s political tradition. Progressivism and populism have tended to gone hand in hand. In the Populist Era a century later, Paine’s vision was reawakened but it served both socially conservative agendas (e.g., religious revivalism, Prohibition) and socially liberal agendas (e.g., feminism)… and, oddly, it often was the seemingly social liberal feminists who were promoting the socially conservative agendas such as Prohibition. Still, at the heart of it, there was the same basic impulse that motivated Paine. The Populists were progressive in that they believed by making changes in the social order the average person would be empowered to change themselves. It’s the ideal of grassroots democracy, of direct political action.

Once upon a time, the Republican Party was the progressive party. Republicans ended slavery and maintained the union, created the national park service, built the interstate highway system, created the EPA. Et Cetera. These aren’t inherently liberal or conservative issues. Maintaining the union was maintaining the status quo and protecting the social order, both conservative impulses in a fundamental sense (although they’ve come to be identified with contemporary liberals). Conservative used to mean ‘conserving’ such as conserving land and resources by creating national parks and by creating the EPA which protects (i.e., conserves) the environment. Even unions aren’t inherently liberal. Maintaining living wages for workers maintains social order and ensures a healthy community and stable families (all of which are issues central to conservatives) which is why Catholic communities have also tended to be union communities.

In conclusion:
The liberalism of America’s past gets claimed by many American conservatives today.
And the conservatism of America’s past becomes identified with Americans labeled as liberals today.
But the radical left of America’s past and present usually gets forgotten and ignored.

- – -

I just finished writing another post that is in some ways a continuation of what I wrote above:

Is Classical Liberalism Liberal?

By the way, this is a topic I’ve grappled with often. This post is a summarization of analysis I’ve made and data I’ve gathered in previous posts:

Pew Political Typology Test

America’s Political Confusion

America: Conservative & Progressive

Real Americans: Political Narrative & Public Opinion

Divide and Conquer

Political Labels & Demographic Trends

US Demographics & Increasing Progressivism

Political Party, Morality, Personality, Gender

Political Identity, Myers-Briggs, Spiral Dynamics

Psychology of Politics, Development of Society

Conservative & Liberal Families: Observations & Comparison

Social Indebtedness: Strict Father Morality & Hierarchical Authority

Responsibility: Choice vs Obligation

Liberal Pragmatism, Conservative Dogmatism

Liberals are the New Fiscal Conservatives

Libertarians: Rich White Males of the Republican Party

Republicans Support Big Government… just as long as Republicans are in power

Warmongering Politicians & Progressive Public

Conservative Moral Order & the Lazy Unemployed

America: Christian Nation?

America’s North/South Divide (& other regional data)

Conservative Critics of Conservatism

Morality, Politics, and Psychology

Right Vs Left: Personality Differences

Violence vs Empathy, Indifference vs Unhappiness

Do Rightwingers Love War?

Masculinity & Presidency, Sexism & Politics

Katz: Sure. Well, the first thing I think that I look at in my work, and I think it’s really fundamental and basic, is that there is a persistent gender gap in voting patterns in the United States. And among white men in particular, white men have been voting radically disproportionately for the Republican nominee for president for the last 40 years. And working class white men, and there’s different ways of defining working class, but with a high school education, men with a high school education, voted in 2000 for George Bush by something like 27 points over Al Gore, and Kerry, about 25% voted for Bush over Kerry in 2004. Barack Obama cut into that pretty significantly in 2008, although he still lost the white men’s vote.

David: That’s right.

Katz: But he lost it by like about 16 percentage points, so he made some significant inroads into the white men’s vote. But if you look at white male voting patterns, the only way a Democrat can win at the national level, in the presidency, is if they win so… such a dramatic percentage of the women’s vote that it offsets their deficit among the white male vote.

David: That’s right.

Katz: And so how can we not talk about gender? Why are white men so dramatically voting for the Republican candidate for president? Now, some people, of course, for the last… since the Civil Rights Act have been talking about race as one of the central forces subtextually at work in presidential politics.

David: And it’s being talked about looking forward also because of the increasing Hispanic population and how that will play a factor.

Katz: That’s right. And of course, Obama being an African American, that brought to the surface a lot of discussions about race and politics and such that had always been there, but they were talked about even more explicitly, would white people vote for an African American for president, etc.

My thinking is that it’s not just that white men are voting as a racialized block for the Republican candidate, although that’s a big part of it, they’re also voting in a gender sense as men because since, especially since the late 60s and early 70s, and then increasingly after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, the way that the two-party system has been sort of shaken out, if you will, in the gender binary is the Republican Party is the party of real men…

David: Right.

Katz: And the Democratic Party is the party of women and feminized men, and that has heterosexist implications as well.

David: Sure.

Katz: Because the party is seen as, the Democratic Party is seen as the party of gay rights, if you will, in addition to the men in the Democratic Party feminized in the national discourse. And I think this is a cultural/political analysis, right? I think that this is an incredibly important reason why lots of white men, including working and middle-class white men, vote against their economic interests, at least as some of us understand those economic interests.

David: No question about it.

Katz: Right. So this complicates the analysis of, say, Thomas Frank and others who have been trying to figure out why so many Americans, especially white Americans, have voted against their economic interests for the past generation.

David: You mentioned the issue of gay rights, and we saw that really incredibly directly and just at the forefront in the discussion of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I mean, I interviewed people who said the reason we shouldn’t have homosexuals serving openly in the military is because the American military is manly. And implicit in that, even though it’s not discussed, is that there’s something bad about, you know, femininity and women in the military. And when I challenged some of those people directly, it was made very clear that that is involved in that subtext, just barely underneath the surface. But other than that particular issue, what else is it that has driven this white male voting block towards the Republican candidate?

Katz: Well, in my book that I’m working on and just about to complete, I look at three issues. There’s so many issues, and so you have to really narrow it. But…

David: Yeah. Well, the major ones maybe are…

Katz: Yes. Yeah, sure. I looked at three issues that all involve violence, and they all involve important political issues over the past 40, 50 years. The first one is the cold war, the second one is the rise of street crime as a domestic political issue in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and the discussion about, you know, violent crime, street crime, has a definitely racialized undertone to it, and then the rise of terrorism as a political issue in the late 20th century and into the 21st century.

All three of those issues, cold war, domestic crime, and terrorism, have to do with violence, and the president is a stand-in, in a certain sense, the symbolic leader of the country. He embodies, if you will, the national masculinity in a very important sense. People talk about the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the mourner-in-chief when national tragedy happens, the first family, the… I mean, he’s the one who everybody salutes to and everybody stands when he enters the room. He really does, in a certain sense, represent the country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/teachable-moment-in-tucso_b_809963.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/rush-limbaugh-and-the-mob_b_279696.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/white-men-and-the-gop-mas_b_124136.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/the-hidden-race-and-gende_b_88580.html

 

Conservatives: Then & Now

Rep. Weiner Goes Off On Republicans Over 9/11 Health Compensation Act

In my last post Cost of War, I was expressing my outrage at the ignorance of the American people and the immorality of the American Military-Industrial Complex. It pisses me off. Why do people refuse to do the right thing? Why do people cowardly hide behind political rationalizations, behind patriotic rhetoric, behind empty moralizing?

For once, politicians quit acting like weasels, capitalists quit acting like selfish assholes, and American citizens quit acting like ignorant morons. Just for a moment, act like human beings who actually care about other people.

To demonstrate how outraged I feel, watch the following video.

America’s Political Confusion

I’ve been reading some books lately which have got me thinking about politics and society. The books in question include: The Eliminationists by David Neiwert, The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, Conservativs Without Conscience by John W. Dean, Bite the Hand That Feeds You by Henry Fairlie, several books by Richard Hofstadter (in particular, The Paranoid Style in American Politics), and several books by Strauss and Howe (in particular, The Fourth Turning). All of them relate to the topic of the differences between the right and left in contemporary politics and how our country has become this way.

What specifically inspired this post are some discussions I was having on YouTube with fiscal conservatives, anarcho-capitalists and libertarians. What I’m constantly amazed by is that those on the right rarely have any understanding of the political views on the left. Libertarianism is understood at a basic level by most politically knowledgeable people both on the right and the left. But socialism is blatantly misunderstood by those on the right (and I’d add by many on the left as well). I don’t think it’s necessarily ideologically-motivated willful ignorance. Some seemingly intelligent and otherwise well informed conservatives will often identify socialism with communism and fascism. One of the rightwingers I was arguing with even claimed to be a B.A. in International Political Economy, but I hope that isn’t true because that would mean there was a serious lack in the quality of his education.

The basic confusion is based in the idiosyncratic and changing definitions in the US of conservatism and liberalism and of how they relate to the two parties. Once upon a time the Democrats were ruled by libertarian-leaning Dixiecrats and the Republicans were the party of Lincoln. Democrats became modern liberals by fighting for civil rights and Republicans became modern conservatives by (with the Southern Strategy) resisting the civil rights movement.

The even more confusing part is that liberalism and libertarianism both have their origins in classical liberalism. Also, libertarianism had it’s beginnings, according to Noam Chomsky, in the European socialist workers’ movement.

The Wikipedia article about socialism mentions anarchism 24 times and libertarian 8 times (mostly in relation to the history and development of socialism). However, it only mentions fascism twice and only in reference to the fact that certain socialists identify fascism with capitalism. Here are a few examples of different versions of socialism that aren’t included in the simplistic conservative understanding: libertarian socialism, social anarchism, libertarian Marxism, syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, individualist anarchism, anarcho-collectivism, and anarcho-communism. The last one even proves communism isn’t simply equated with centralized state govt control.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on conservatives considering that many liberals are so confused about liberalism that they even identify as conservatives. Obviously, there are some major problems in our education system and in our mainstream media.

Some other posts that relate to the political confusion of Americans:
Warmongering Politicians & Progressive Public
Liberals are the New Fiscal Conservatives