As between the Ph.D. in political philosophy (for whom I once worked) and a self-described rodeo clown, I’ll go with the former every time. If Glenn Beck were the future of conservatism, it would become a discredited movement. Fortunately, though, he’s not, and it won’t.
Peter Wehner “Bennett vs. Beck,” Contentions
Seems Rex and Narciso got the discussion started in these parts, and, if I weren’t so busy today, I’d try to weigh in on the Beck-Bennett contro in detail.
It’s been a topic at HotAir and at the Corner, where Bennett’s response first appeared, as well as at Contentions. Since Beck is having Bennett on his (radio only?) show today, the discussion will likely advance beyond anything I have to say on the specifics, if it hasn’t already.
Bennett’s more concerned with Beck’s presentation and his views on Republicans as (having been) no better than Democrats. I’ll just add on a key Beck theme that I get his critique of Progressivism, which follows Jonah Goldberg’s work in Liberal Fascism, but at a certain point you have to ask just how far does he want or expect us to go in wiping it out? Get rid of anti-trust and child labor laws? Food safety inspection and regulation? Ballot initiatives/referenda? National parks?
He says, “of course, not,” but that’s easy for him to say after any given hour near-equating the Progressives with Nazis and Stalinists, and lambasting certain leading Republicans for revering TR.
Comments 62
OMG,
I’m a Neo-Bircher:
The Society has been active in supporting the auditing and the eventual dismantling of the Federal Reserve System. The current legislation was initiated by Ron Paul. The JBS believes that the U.S. Constitution gave only Congress the ability to coin money, and did not intend for it to delegate this power to a banking monopoly, or to transform it into a fiat currency not backed by gold or silver
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:23 am
Mark Levin chimes in – http://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-levin/marks-new-note-feb-21-2010/322101900945
This may not be the end of BECK!, or the beginning of the end… perhaps the end of the beginning, or maybe the beginning of the middle… er… uh…
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:49 am
It’s neither a rodeo nor a graduate seminar. It’s eighth grade, I’m sitting in the front row and the teacher is Mayflower Sadie!
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I think there is an understandable worry that establishment Republicans have adopted a temporary and easily forgotten fondness for conservative values, and, so far, Beck has focused on this the best.
Isn’t there a bit of jealousy going on here? Aren’t Beck’s numbers humongous? Do any of the other talk jocks come close to his viewership?
I say let 1000 blossoms bloom. My favorites are the two most eccentric, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck, as well as my lovely girl next door, Laura Ingraham
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Levin despises Beck – and I think he explains his reasons succinctly. Hannity and Limbaugh are WAY ahead of Beck and Savage listenership-wise – 20MM and 16MM compared to 9MM for B & S. Levin and Laura Ingraham trail, in the 6MM range. I caught a big of Rush today, and I got the impression he was taking Bennett’s side though without making it about personalities, and instead going after the idea that there was no diff between Ds and Rs, and warning against the 3rd Party temptation.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:05 pm
It’s a shame, because they agree more than they disagree, although ‘God love him’ as our Vice President would say, one can only listen to Levin in small doses.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:12 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROvq05-S9Bg
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:29 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’m thinking of Beck’s 5 – 6PM TV Show, with the red phone and the guy in the Mao hat sitting next to it. As TV shows go, doesn’t Beck’s outdo Hannity’s (who I find not a little tiresome), and isn’t Beck’s slot more favorable timewise? I often watch the beginning of his show at the office and listen on satellite radio as I drive home. Hannity’s show competes with a lot of good stuff on evening TV.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:33 pm
hmmmmm test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpil04ciU-4
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:42 pm
@ Zoltan Newberry:
Well… you’re in a different zone than I am, Z. I believe that Hannity’s TV slot is considered more valuable, but Beck has been killing him in the #s, which is why Beck gets re-broadcast latenight. O’Reilly’s the only one with numbers about as good as Beck’s lately.
But I think there’s a better chance that Beck blows up, Howard Beale-style. He’s come close a few times – saying that
is a racist, for instance. Didn’t quite go over EVERYONE’s line… Or he may just peter out gradually – perhaps motivating a blow-up, perhaps not – if the tenor of the times changes, and especially if the apocalypse fails to arrive and in fact people start feeling better about the future.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Beck’s edginess is an important part of his charm I think.
I think he’s better at rechanneling his anger than Rush is. Rush often lacks Glenn’s good natured warmth.
Racist is a naughty, highly fraught word. It empowers 0blama. Chicago invented and perfected the race card. It has taken Mister Peanut all the way to the top.
Perhaps voters will get very very tired of it before the next Presidential vote.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I find Beck’s fascination with the Progressives fascinating–he wants to know where it all started, and he seems to be the only one stuck on that question. That’s what makes him more skeptical of the Republicans–he sees the traces of Progressivist ideas everywhere, whereas Rush and Hannity focus on the issues of the day and draw partisan lines. And the neo-cons have always just wanted to rearrange the incentives provided by the welfare state. Levin is just as radical as Beck, at least ideologically–he also, as I understand it, thinks the New Deal needs to be repealed as an unconstitutional monstrosity–so I wonder why he can’t see that Beck’s histrionics may flow from sense of how extraordinarily difficult it would be to uproot all that. They want Beck to get with the program–retaking Congress, etc.–but he’s obviously selling what a lot of people want. It seems to me that tens of millions of people able to trace the ideas of contemporary Democrats back to their roots a century ago will continue to be stalwart defenders of liberty even after the current assault has been thrown back. And there may be a lot Republicans who resent not being able to just get back to business as usual once this “aberration” has come to end.
I like all of them very much though, and hope they continue to have it out in public–that in itself is an education.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:37 pm
@ adam:
Levin is fond of saying that it took 75 years to get where we are, it may take 75 years to get out of it. He may use words close to that in Liberty and Tyranny, or I may just have heard him speaking that way.
Beck speaks like a tent meeting evangelist anticipating tribulations – while incidentally marking out a gold-plated Rapture for himself. It’s a show, but so were the old revival meetings in some part – the disaster flicks of their day, before there were disaster flicks.
One excerpt plucked out of the CPAC speech was the one where he describes Progressivism as a “cancer,” and how you can’t have just a little bit of cancer. (I’m not always sure whether “Progressive” ought to be capitalized in his discourse, whether he’s speaking about an outlook or a multi-generational movement/conspiracy.) At such times, he does veer into extremism, with implications precisely as repellent and un-Amerian as any he’s attributed to progressivism or even to Nazism and Communism, which he has, in my view falsely and manipulatively, attempted to turn into the same thing. I can’t support it.
I understand that people like Beck, including Levin, believe that modern transnational progressivism has a high body count, but it’s just the flip side, to me, of the standard-issue leftist polemical style, which also tours the globe tallying great heaps of corpses to count against the other side.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:03 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
So, in final paragraph, you seem to be including Levin along with Beck in the category of “extremist”–which means it’s not primarily a question of Beck’s evangelical style or rhetorical flourishes like calling (P)rogressivism a “cancer”–the question is really one of substance and, as you said in an earlier comment, you reject the idea that the entire (p)rogressivist legacy needs to be (much less can be) overturned:
at a certain point you have to ask just how far does he want or expect us to go in wiping it out? Get rid of anti-trust and child labor laws? Food safety inspection and regulation? Ballot initiatives/referenda? National parks?
So, either (P)rogressivism is a tyrannical way of thinking that has nevertheless produced some good results which we would want to preserve (which might have been established anyway); or it is really more moderate, less dangerous, more assimilable than the genuinely totalitarian political movements. Either way, we would have to be more in a critical dialogue with it than simply hunting down its manifestations. I’m guessing you’re closer to the second view. Am I reading you right?
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:16 am
I think Beck understands the progressives’ totalitarian tendencies. He recognizes they believe in doing whatever it takes to build their utopia. He understands the danger of future coercion and violence.
There is a great threat coming at us from those who want an even stronger central government.
I see him as a bit of a prophet who has adopted the style of the happy warrior.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:29 am
Obama has been a bonanza for all of these people, and if and when he goes away the chances are so will they. (Or they’ll lose much of their audience anyway.) The supply siders and the neocons (who incidentally railed against utopianism for decades – it was their original trademark and the source of their split with the New Left) got their biggest boost from Carter, but Reagan only gave us the Bushes and the Clintons (with a brief detour into Newtland). It’s very nice to think that people are swayed decisively by intellectuals (though think twice where THAT can lead) but I’ll take a reasonably articulate bunch of politicians any day. That said, I kind of miss the old “Firing Line.”
Say, do you know where a certain hockey mom’s lipstick comes from? THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT!!!
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:06 am
Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll,and his strength is a “Constitutional” understanding of Economics. Why is the Fed and Fiat money so acceptable to Conservatives who despise Progressivism seeing that they are the Economic attributes of that same Progressive trap.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:13 am
Beck, at least ideologically–he also, as I understand it, thinks the New Deal needs to be repealed as an unconstitutional monstrosity”
So the Supreme Court knocks down the New Deal,and disavows the Debt that the Federal Government owes the Social Security Fund,then what? Does he think the nation will hold together after that little trauma? I don’t follow Beck,so what’s his opinion about the Wrath of those who don’t get paid.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:21 am
Cute, RC,specially since she is descended from five of them. Look I’m quite skeptical of the Fed, specially their performance in the last decade, the problem is what does one do, there isn’t gold, platinum,
and certainly not unobtanium, to support the massive budget we are
facing,
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:23 am
@Rex: Probably a legacy of rally-round-the-Bushes. I agree that the issue deserves more circulation by mainstream (!) conservatives. I seem to remember the sometime-politician Lew Lehrman making an issue of it many years ago.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:28 am
and certainly not unobtanium, to support the massive budget we are
facing
Well,the TRUE CONSERVATIVE response would be to declare Bankruptcy and restart with a new accounting system based on Free Market Capitalism,not the Capitalism as defined by Marx,which is exactly what we have. As the wealth of the Nation concentrates in the upper 1/10th of the upper 1%,Marx’s “I told you so” is right in our faces. 2nd American Revolution,anybody?
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:36 am
Yes, and who will lend us to us then,after our currency, is totally worseless, You know you are worse, than the Frogman he doesn’t
really care about any of these issues, you do and yet you provide
no answers
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:50 am
narciso wrote: Yes, and who will lend us to us then,after our currency, is totally worseless, You know you are worse, than the Frogman he doesn’t
really care about any of these issues, you do and yet you provide
no answers
You don’t like the answers,the old currency would be replaced by new currency that has an asset backing,we could only borrow if we had collateral for the loan,that’s how Capitalism works,your frustration is an inability to articulate the DEGREE that we have abandaded Capitalism for a hybrid system that is Socialism with Free Marketism combined. The NEOCON pride in America can’t admit how badly we have screwed up,but to fix it,we actually have to give up on our system of living on DEBT. Unfortunately,the price of changing the system is A huge DEPRESSION which will have unintended consequences,these consequences are the motivation for continuing to borrow until our currency is truly worthless. This gives us time,but the ending is the same,BANKRUPTCY. So pay me now,pay me later,or don’t pay me at all. Option 3 is our choice.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:14 am
Rex genuinely believes that the gold standard is the issue, and he and I have disagreed on this point before because in his system currency is developed by mining a somewhat rare metal and hoping you have enough of it to spread out amongst the people. And it too was subject to issues of manipulation by governments.
This is not to excuse the FED, which has become a party to supporting the political purposes of the party in power as opposed to maintaining the value of the currency.
A free market system will always generate winners and losers and to some extent leaves the decision to the particpant to decide how much they wish to play. But to Marx’s chagrin, his world view is not that of capitalism, but of the gasps of totalitarian systems straining to compete. No economic system has launched as many people out of poverty as ours, and certainly Marx’s love has had the opposite effect. What we in this country are now dealing with is the migration away from jobs that paid good wages to those with strong backs to those who can think. This causes disruptions, and the entire impact of labor being globally supplied gives capital more options to see that it is getting what is in its best interest which also creates uncertainty.
Beck isn’t saying anything that Rush or Buckley hasn’t said before. He has a flash for the extreme which is a matter of style. Rush I think is a libertarian at heart who just doesn’t agree that libertarians are neutral on cultural issues – they like to think they aren’t picking sides when they are. But he sees the political reality better than most and knows the media better than they know themselves. He knows that calls for third party mean electoral failure – a divide and be conquered reality.
Progressivism is really benign totalitarianism. It is the tyranny of those who feel they know better. Beck is right to be wary of it, but needs to be careful of being accused of crying wolf.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:27 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
I’m not sure, but I’d bet he hasn’t thought it through–either how the repeal would take place, what the consequences would be, or how we would deal with those consequences. But his line, in general, is something like “it’ll be really tough, but we’ll get through it.” Completely inadequate, I know, but what would be adequate in this case? However we imagine it, it will be different than we imagined, our preparations will always be to a great extent useless, and anyway we won’t do anything until we absolutely have to. But at least some of the things we think through now might have an impact when needed.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:39 am
JEM,
Please share you thoughts on how we deal with our nation’s bankruptcy. Or you could argue that we are not Bankrupt,Good Luck on that one. Is it just coincidence that our money supply was absolutely stable from 1944-1971,and since 1971 to present it is off the richter. Maybe you believe that the size of our currency supply doesn’t affect the purchasing power of the currency. Maybe you believe that our personal and governmental debt is reasonable,and that if we could just cut social spending and lower taxes,that would take care of our economic traumas. Maybe what’s happening in Europe is irrelevant to our recovery.
You’ve always expressed your belief that Capitalism is the best system,and BTW,I agree,I also am pretty certain,that a very bad Government decision to end the Dollar/Gold connection in 1971 created the unintended consequences we are seeing today. Always interested in your opinion on this,my favorite subject.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:46 am
adam wrote:
For all of Levin’s rage, I haven’t heard him speak about removing a “cancer” without remainder or remorse. Same for their practical politics: Beck uses the “not a dime’s worth of difference” argument about Rs and Ds that has always been the trademark of the lunatic fringe. That at other times he reverts to a more reasonable-sounding approach is why I say he “veers” into extremism. If he’s going to retreat into “I’m just a clown,” then my response is it’s not funny to me, and his noise at a certain point becomes a childish distraction at best.
That Levin, like Beck, and even like me from time to time, exploits the high-body-count rhetorical style doesn’t in itself make him an extremist. He clearly supports a conventional politics working through the system as it is for evolutionary change in his preferred direction.
Absolutely. I don’t believe in perfect solutions. That’s one of the main reasons I became a conservative. A conservative progressivism I could live with just fine, and I also think that the idea that we could or should totally eradicate progressivism from our national life, or portray progressives as Commie-Nazis, is equal parts fantastical and politically self-destructive.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:58 am
CK,Narcisco,JEM et al:
Here’s a real Economist who sees things my way.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/death-of-us-capitalism-the-final-10-scenes-2010-02-23
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:07 am
In fact, I have to go a step further and suggest that Beck at some level is calling for a progressivism by other means – progressivist social surgery against progressivism, achieved by unspecified instruments. In reality, you couldn’t achieve that without those same concentration and re-education camps he accuses progressivism of having built. I know that nothing could be further from his conscious intentions, and I hate to use a naughty word, but I believe it really does give a fascist and indeed a fascist-totalitarian tinge to Beck’s discourse.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:14 am
WAy to jump the killer whale, CK, so informing people of the progressive record, and supporting anti progressive candidates encouraging fascism
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:20 am
it really does give a fascist and indeed a fascist-totalitarian tinge to Beck’s discourse
Thank you CK,an even better comment than came from Bennett or JRUB about the Beckmeister. For the ultimate dramatization of this process check out a novel,”The Spell” by Hermann Broch.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:21 am
We have faced bankruptcies and currency issues throughout the 1800′s – I believe we did default on bonds purchased by England in the early to mid 1800s. I remember “Free Silver movements” etc throughout our history.
I do not disagree that we are currently too indebted. We are I feel. But I believe that it is the result of the political class realization of their ability to buy votes with the public purse as a byproduct of our increasing wealth was evolving, and I believe that was due to the movement of progressive politics, not the gold standard. I do not agree with any economist no matter what his education is, that having an asset based currency, based upon getting more of the asset in order to increase the currency supply, makes sense. Wealth is a function of time and effort and productivity. Providing a proper measure of THAT and the ability of people to trade their productivity for items which are the result of others productivity is the proper role of currency. Asset based currency has the potential to do that, but it fixes the limit of wealth creation. A currency based upon productivity does not. Gold is not a measure of wealth – trade is -as Spain found out many years ago.
To your overall point, the Fed has not met my expectations on maintaining the dollar’s value as a measure of productivity either.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:24 am
Yeah CK, I am not sure I would go that far. On that basis, you are doomed to never fix anything. It is like saying a conservative Supreme Court could not overturn an earlier SC decision because they must respect precedent, when the earlier decision ran afoul of precendent itself.
Beck can go over the top, we agree. His rantings to the degree it fuels third party dreams, is counterproductive. But I cannot follow you any further than that.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:27 am
JEM wrote:
we are sometimes amused by this, but we must retain a proper sense of young Beck and of his station.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:35 am
RC, that comes perilously to Sullivan’s little fever dream, about Palin,
“Tomorrow belongs to her” which is the closest to a compliment he will ever make
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:42 am
JEM,I sympathize,but the visible(Booked Debt) is dangerous,when you factor in the “Off Book” Debt,it becomes out of control. A default in Greece is a domino,but we can’t predict the Domino string. And Wall Street could care less,as long as the Debt Service on their deals is covered. It’s every man for themselves,I’m old,however,I won’t starve or be Homeless(Probably)I’m watching it unfold in Tranquility. I recall the scene in the Titanic where the Billy Zane charactor says to his bodyguard,”It’s starting to unravel.”
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 am
Hermann Broch – who knew whereof he spoke.@ narciso:
Now that’s unfair, narc. I criticize specific aspects of Beck’s approach, not the goal of exploring progressivism or supporting “anti-progressive” candidates. Though, again, I have to wonder what “anti-progressive” really means in the US of A 2010. Does it mean believing that Social Security and Medicare need to be eliminated post-haste, the National Parks auctioned off to the highest bidders, all of the amendments after the 10th repealed, and reparations paid to the old Confederacy? If not – I mean, I know it doesn’t – then what does it mean? Is Paul Ryan too much of a “progressive,” because he puts forward a plan that anticipates the long-term maintenance of entitlement programs, though with new and evolving structures? I’m not being a smartass, I think we have to know. I don’t think you can call progressivism a cancer and at the same time support initiatives like Ryan’s.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 am
And I do not believe that the gold standard in and of itself stops that.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:51 am
narciso wrote:
the lone narciscan knows but slenderly.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:52 am
OT Speaking of the gold standard, there is some creeping pushback coming from the likes of David Frum and Robert Shrum, among others, concentrating on the treatment of the gold standard leading up to and during the Depression. I’d be curious to learn how the gold bugs respond to their historical narratives and their arguments, and will be putting up a post or some links shortly. At this point, I tend to think we need something that achieves what the gold standard is supposed to achieve, but that there’s no going back. I think Rex’s guy Mike Hudson may have had more interesting ideas about a Next World Order.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:07 am
No I addressed that RC, who went the extra step, now I could cite Hans Fallada, as well but that would be overkill. but I did suggest you went overboard, CK, in characterizing Beck’s approach. Now to the left it is like that Brezhnev or more properly Suslov, no retreat
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:10 am
JEM wrote: And I do not believe that the gold standard in and of itself stops that
It’s step one of the TURNAROUND,if you’ve ever been in charge of a Turnaround of a Bankrupt entity,you have to have a plan,and step one,stop the bleeding,the expansion 0f the money supply to be used as debt, is the bleeding.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:12 am
Shrum/Frum I don’t know how to take that
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:22 am
Rex Caruthers wrote:
Explain to me how gold alone – or any fixed asset can do that? I can do that right now without it. A gold standard can be modified by politicans – just as it was before.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:36 am
Did the great depression occur because of the delinking of gold to currency? Or did a recession get turned into a depression by torpedoing world trade and spending like a drunken sailor?
Trade is wealth. Gold is a false god.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:39 am
JEM wrote: Did the great depression occur because of the delinking of gold to currency? Or did a recession get turned into a depression by torpedoing world trade and spending like a drunken sailor?
Trade is wealth. Gold is a false god
Debt caused the Great Depression,and is the underlying reason for Depressions. In our case,specifically,we were allowed to wallow in debt because of the unlinking;it is specific to our situation,not a Universal Verity.
Our version of Trade creates wealth,just not for us,but for the Rest of the World. Out Trade policies have put 5Trillion of our Dollars into the hands of our competitors,not great for the US.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
JEM,If we had had regulations in place limiting the amount of Debt for the Federal Government,and limiting the money supply expansion,and limiting the amount of trade deficits etc etc,we wouldn’t need the Gold,but we didn’t,and now we do.
However,I haven’t heard one specific idea that you have to fix things,send more of our $s overseas to buy flat screens on Credit? Here’s a good one,let’s make it illegal to have a Gold Standard,and Inflate our way out of Debt/Wait,that is the plan,Sorry.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:14 am
Economic contractions rise out of speculation, ie; the railroad boom that collapse in 1893, and reverberated in the Canal Scandal, the
twin rise of anarchism and Boulangerism and antidreyfusard sentiment in France, similar sentiment in Spain that led to Canovas and the extra
step in colonies, Coxeys army and eventually Bryan
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:19 am
Gold is a false god
We’re not talking about worshipping a Golden Calf,it’s just a technique to hamstring the FED,and the currrency traders,and the derivative traders,and the Carry Traders.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:57 am
Gold is a false god
Tell that to the CPAC Baggers who voted for Ron Paul.
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
75% didn’t vote for anybody, out of the remaining quarter, about 30%
voted for Paul
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
@ narciso:
You got a source for those numbers?
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:48 pm
http://66.147.244.188/~conserz8/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2-10-CPAC-Straw-Poll-Final-Compatibility-Mode.pdf
Here’s the poll. If there were 10,000 or so in attendance, as the organizers claimed, the narc would have the numbers about right.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Gold limits growth and wealth creation. Trade provides real improvement in people’s living standards. You suggest gold stops all the bad things spendthrift governments do. I tell you they can blow past a gold fix in nothing flat, and have in the past. Goldbugs have a romantic notion that currency actually has value because I have this many tons of gold and therefore this many paper dollars floating around with a claim against those tons. How does that help?
When the government needs to they either default on the bonds or repeg the currency. TaDa!! Done.
What I expect is that my elected officials require the Fed to do their duty and quit trying to move unemployment rates and all other matters of economic policy. That requires unelecting representatives who spend like drunken sailors and hold the new ones to the higher standards. We have a debt ceiling right now – and it is modified upwards every so often. And inflation may or may not bite us in the butt as a result of that.
I appreciate the magical powers you want to place on gold. The problem is it has no such powers. Currency, like all things we do, is impacted by flawed men.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:51 pm
There may always be evil in the world, but that’s no reason not to call it evil and fight against it in the hope of eliminating it–certainly in the case of specific evils, anyway. Progressivist thinking was very clear in its rejection of the philosophy of government informing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution from the very beginning, as well as about its realization that that philosophy could only be overthrown indirectly, gradually, and insidiously–so, it’s rather hard to discuss it without sounding a bit conspiratorial.
Progressivism in this sense follows the previous, and first, mode of thinking to attack the founding principles of the U.S.–the pro-slavery apologetics that accompanied the rise of the South prior to the Civil War, and dominated much social thought and historiography in the U.S. well into the 20th century. In this case as well, “all men are created equal” was deemed too simplistic and outmoded. Compromise turned out to be impossible in that case–it may very well be, and I suspect it is, the case that there is something in the “DNA” of a free, constitutional order that makes it “allergic” to state-centered, ethnic-centered, and natural-hierarchically based political philosophies. Lincoln, admittedly, didn’t speak about a “cancer,” but he did make it clear that we couldn’t survive this particular division.
Leaving aside the question of the kind of catastrophe which (as Rex likes to remind us) will inevitably attend any sustained attempt to correct course, there may be very little that the government does that can’t be done by private enterprise and private associations. There is already plenty of thinking in libertarian circles about all this. For me, the main question is whether it is possible to start moving in this direction in spite of, and in isolation from, the existing political order–to start setting up new networks of education, trade, etc., and then fight for exemptions from taxes and regulations from the state. Most libertarians, at least from what I have seem, seem to say (interestingly) no–we’ll have to work through the existing order to persuade people to embrace freedom.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I appreciate the magical powers you want to place on gold
No Magic,just a tactic. Again compare the money supply from 1944-1971 with 1971-2009,and explain the difference. In fact,pick any economic statistic you want,compare group 1 to Group 2,try to explain the difference,inflation,debt,trade deficit,use of carry trade/zirp,and use of derivatives. When you can create money unconnected to anything real,the cat is out of the bag. Remember the Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Mickey Mouse. Wrong again,the Magic is the belief that people in charge of an economy can control their greed in the face of infinite money. The irony is that infinite money becomes ZERO value,ask the Germans.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
@ adam:
I’m guessing that what you wrote is ridiculous because it wasn’t clear enough for surety.
It seems that Progressivism is evil in the world and that it’s unAmerican and something something pro-slavery modes of thought that the Constitution rejects somehow.
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Who is surety?
Anyway, the lack of clarity may be because it’s a response to several of CK’s earlier posts (27, 29, 37, 40), but I didn’t bother quoting or linking to them–I figured anyone following that discussion of Beck and Progressivism would see what I’m saying. But the discussion seems to have moved on to the gold standard anyway.
But you don’t believe that there is a consistent political philosophy behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (that can therefore be attacked and undermined), then none of it would make sense to you no matter what. I suppose I can live with that.
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
@ adam:
I’d kinda hoped that any gold standard discussion would migrate over to the links thread, where I linked the two articles mentioned. No such luck. However, JED has posted an articulate defense of Beck, maybe more a spoiling attack on his critics, over at HA and I presume at her own blog. We may be able to continue this conversation later, and in more depth.
I do have to say however that I find it difficult to substitute “evil” for “(p)rogressive,” or conceive of the complete and absolute eradication of any creed, ideology, or impetus as within the American tradition. It’s difficult to define progressivism precisely: As an outlook or worldview it pre-exists any organized political initiatives under that name: In a sense it’s the Enlightenment for the industrial age, and in a related sense the American idea was and is a crypto-progressive project.
My reading of the history of slavery and the South suggests that Abolition can also be seen as a quasi- or crypto-progressive movement, most readily as against a Southern defense of states’ rights, which in the first decades of the republic were hardly conceived of as unconstitutional, especially given specific provisions of the constitution that acknowledged the existence of the institution. Lincoln famously detected opposition to slavery and a sense that it contradicted the fundamental promise of American democracy in the works of the Founders, but even he proposed a gradualist response to the institution in his own day. As we know, events sped beyond his imagination and expectations.
Anyway, more later – I’m getting ahead of myself here.
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:41 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’ll look forward to picking it up later–and I am familiar with the readings of Southern ideology and Abolitionism you refer to. It’s not that states rights was unconstitutional, it’s that Douglas’s defense of “popular sovereignty” implied an indifference to human rights if the democratic will so determined. In other words, the people can decide if some are to be more equal than others, in which case the notion of self-government is transformed beyond recognition. Underlying this transformation, and especially later as various “scientific” theories of races emerged, is the notion that human equality is not only not a given, but is subject to the dominant opinion of the day. And, indeed, there is a kind of “dogmatism” to the insistence on equality–after all, as yet unanticipated scientific discoveries might “disprove ” it in many ways. It’s the subversion of that essential “dogmatism” that, for me, ties together slavery and then segregationist apologists and Progressivism (and is it a coincidence that the Democratic Party became their shared home?).
Also, a lingering but still powerful sympathy for the Confederacy is, in my view, an extremely destructive element of contemporary conservative politics. I think these things matter–and the libertarians are on the wrong side here.
But didn’t Lincoln initiate Big Government? We’ll take that up another time.
Anyway, I suppose this thread has been severed, so if you don’t reply here, we’ll pick it up elsewhere.
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:56 pm
CK MacLeod wrote:
@ adam:
I’d kinda hoped that any gold standard discussion would migrate over to the links thread,
David Frum didn’t even mention 1971,and his analysis of the role of Gold in GD#1 was obviously found elsewhere and regurged.
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
JEM,
The purveyors of the Economics favorable to you have to answer for the Great Mess,something bad happened under their watch,/Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction.
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:17 pm
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