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Heartless Conservatives Unite!
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Lee Siegel talks to Sam Tanenhaus, author of the era-defining The Death of Conservatism, about his Buckley fetish, Sarah Palin's culture war, and why the right wing abandoned politics.
“I have a Buckley fetish” Sam Tanenhaus said with a self-mocking laugh.
William F. Buckley, that is, whose biography Tanenhaus—who is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and that paper’s Week in Review—is thick in the middle of writing. Then he proceeded to tell me one of his favorite stories about Buckley. “Whenever one of his books got a negative review,” Tanenhaus explained. “Buckley would send the reviewer a devil’s food cake. And when he got a positive review, the reviewer would get an angel food cake. That was it. No recriminating letters or phone calls. Just the cakes.”
“These conservatives today are heartless. They are really heartless.”
The Death of Conservatism By Sam Tanenhaus Random House 144 pages $17
We were having a drink in a crepuscular bar on a warm summer evening in one of the hotel watering holes in the West 40s, between Grand Central Station and the old New York Times building, not far from the old offices of The New Yorker. It was a good place to meet and talk about Tanenhaus’s new book, The Death of Conservatism. Because the conservatism he is writing about is not just a political ideology. It was a way of thinking, and writing, and even being that went way beyond politics.
Really memorable nonfiction books have two premises. The first is the book’s argument, stated at the outset. The second is what you might call the author’s argument, embedded in his character. The finest nonfiction books are a public quarrel started by a set of private passions. This is why they are often said to “write themselves.” Even if they weren’t written, they would, in some way, be lived.
The explicit argument first. For Tanenhaus, the conservatives have abandoned their core values of respect for tradition and sensitivity to the necessity of change—of pragmatic, principled adaptability—for a rigid absolutism that expresses itself in a politics of destruction and mechanical negativity.
The party that once stood for governmental ballast and probity in the '50s, and for governmental order and responsibility in the late '60s—as the liberals’ well-intentioned war and their well-intentioned welfare state came crashing down on society—now identified government itself with the forces of evil.
An interesting consequence followed. Since political power can only operate through government, the conservatives had chosen to exert their power more directly, around politics, as it were, by means of cultural confrontation, personal attack, and reflexive stonewalling. This is why conservatives seem most politically organized when out of power, and why when they attain political power, they immediately begin to act like apolitical outlaws.
It’s also why their preferred battleground has been the arena of culture, not politics. As Tanenhaus observes in his book, ever since Buckley equated America’s “ruling class” with “the opinion-makers” (the media, mostly), conservatives have set their sights on liberal dominance of culture. The New Left’s desire to take power by making “the long march through institutions” (i.e. universities) has now become the right wing’s desire to acquire power by making a long march through the media.
Thus its main spokespeople have been cultural, not political figures: Limbaugh, Coulter, and the noisy pantheon at Fox News. This is why conservatism’s political figures often leave the hills and valleys of politics for the darkling plain of culture: Gingrich and Palin.
To make this argument—one strand among many in his book—Tanenhaus pointedly quotes the great political historian Richard Hofstader, who wrote in 1954 that McCarthyism was a “form of cultural protest, evidence that politics itself was assuming a new character.” That new character was the politics of culture, which is what drives today’s “movement conservatism,” as Tanenhaus calls it, as opposed to traditional conservativsm, which was motivated by a belief that “American politics is a replenishing exercise in adjustment and accommodation.”
What is most fascinating about Tanenhaus’s fascinating book is his nimble grasp of what Hegel called “the cunning of history.” He is ultra-sensitive to the social-psychological aspect of American politics, to the way opposing factions project themselves onto their adversary, covet and envy the opponent’s principles and social position, express antagonism by impersonating and/or parodying the enemy’s most successful values.
So, as Tanenhaus writes, the liberal rhetoric of compassion and the state’s responsibility to its most hard-pressed citizens—the poor—which led to the New Deal became the Reagan conservatives’ rhetoric of compassion and the state’s responsibility to its most hard-pressed citizens—the middle class—which led to tax cuts that undid or diminished many of the New Deal’s social programs.
Tanenhaus himself embodies this ironic complexity. He writes with warm admiration of the Ur-conservative Edmund Burke’s “distrust of all ideologies, beginning with their totalizing nostrums.” He glowingly describes how Burke “warned against “the destabilizing perils of extremist politics of any kind.” This conservative credo seems to be the root of his revulsion against today’s conservative extremists.
Yet his own antagonism to the totalizing extremism of movement conservatism is derived from his antagonism to the totalizing extremism of Soviet communism and its influence on certain branches of American progressivism. Tanenhaus’ sardonic treatment of liberal technocrats’ soulessness in the '60s is nearly as scathing as his contempt for what he calls today’s “revanchist”—i.e. reactionary—conservatives. He has no dogma in this race.
Which brings me to the book’s second, unstated premise. It is alluded to at the end of the book, when Tanenhaus writes about what he calls “a central truth of human nature. Most of us are liberal and conservative…” This is not a political observaton. It is a literary one. It is really of no use to the political operative or tactician looking for a leg up over the opposition. It is a quiet, almost Emersonian sort of paradox that invites reflection, not action.
“The Death of Conservatism”—it should really be called “The Death of Rational, Pragmatic Conservativsm”—has the intimate literary quality of that “classic” you read in college which stuck with you, which imparted a novelistic density to events that put your private life into dramatic relationship with the public world around you. Behind history are ideas, and behind ideas are men and women. And your own ability to perceive and make sense of these ideas is your way in the world. A little niche for yourself in history.
I have a weakness for this kind of adventure story about people’s role in making history, especially when it treats urgent contemporary events like episodes out of Tacitus or Carlyle. I don’t know of any other book about politics now by a living author that presents what we are living through with such riveting depths.
Sure, there are a few weak spots. Writing about the right wing’s “growing fixation on the [liberal] power elite in the early '60s, Tanenhaus might have added that the left wing’s own fixation on same—see C. Wright Mills’ classic work, The Power Elite—made the same argument with different targets.
And I wish he had elaborated on his intriguing suggestion that “Watergate secured the ascendancy of movement revanchism.” He means the perception that Nixon was destroyed by the liberal culture-makers, who were portrayed as anti-American, lay behind the sympathy for Reagan’s attacks on liberals. But surely Reagan’s triumph among the “Reagan Democrats” had just as much, if not more, to do with shifting economic realities. Sometimes the engines that drive reality are more prosaic than ideas.
But the unique virtue of this book is Tanenhaus' belief that individuals, to a great extent make their fate out of sentiments and concepts the way human life is made out of flesh and blood. Tanenhaus refuses to accept that, ultimately, there is anything at all prosaic about the public quarrels swirling around us.
As we left the bar, the natural light slowly gave way to the light from streetlamps and storefronts, and we walked through the thickening air of expectation that gathers on a humid summer evening in Manhattan. Some anecdote, or piece of gossip recalled what writers’ lives are like. We both agreed that the conservatives were exceptionally welcoming and kind to people who did not hail from exclusive backgrounds, and that this attitude had a genuine appeal to young writers lacking membership in a special group or club.
“But,” Tanenhaus said, shaking his head, “these conservatives today are heartless. They are really heartless.”
You might say that they want to have their devil’s food cake, and eat it too.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
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Lee Siegel is The Daily Beast's senior columnist. He publishes widely on culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture And Commerce—And Why It Matters. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
mcmchugh99
Conservatism is not dead, just moribund, as progressivism was in the Second Gilded Age of the 1980s and 1990s. These things go in cycles, and small government, laissez faire conservatism will make a comeback--probably in the 2020s. When will have Harding-Coolidge-Reagan type presidents again who favor limited government, reduced taxes for the rich and deregulation of business.
If history is any guide, though, they will not repeal the major reforms that Obama is going to pass in this New Foundation or Second Progressive Era--whatever it's going to be called.
If history is any guide, we will have more reform periods in each generation, every 30-40 years. Assuming this pattern hold good, will will have reformist eras in the 2030s and 2060s, and for some reasons the sixth decade of every century turns out to be a real barn burner.
I don't know why these cycles of reform and conservatism work this way, but they have been going on for 200 years or more, at least since Jefferson's time, and possibly even earlier in the 17th Centuries.
So let's not confuse these periodic shifts and pendulum swings with the "death" of reform or conservatism.
neverlate
Bullshit - true conservatism is alive and well, except it exists in Asia and the Asian mind. The Reagan revolution, despite the protestations from the Left, never reversed the New Deal or LBJ's nanny state .
We have joined the Europeans as also-ran's.
mcmchugh99
No bullshit. These cycles are very real, and happen every generation, and not just in the US but also Britain, Canada and Australia.
As for true conservatism in Asia, you are forgetting that I lived out there for years. Those countries are all very statist and mercantilist, not laissez faire or free market capitalist. They have their own kind of conservatism that is authoritarian, hierarchical and Confucian, but it is not the same thing as American "conservatism".
sophia5
"These conservatives today are heartless. They are really heartless."
Oh please, cry me a river,
Liberals are referring to dissenters as "Brown Shirts, Nazis."
Politics has always been ruthless in this country, left versus right,
now it's MSNBC versus Fox,
The Heritage Foundation versus ACORN.
We live in the age of hyper-sensitivity.
The age of political correctness, the indoctrination starts
at an early age now, from every little leaguer, winners and losers,
everyone gets a trophy. Don't want to be "Heartless"
and hurt the losing team's feelings.
(Take a cue from the current Little League World Series.
These kids live real life, where there are ACTUAL winners and losers,
where losing causes tears, but builds character.)
Some Liberal American school teachers would rather grade papers
with purple markers because red is too "harsh," it might be
"Heartless" and hurt the child's feelings.
Some Liberal schools of higher learning no longer
recognize the Valedictorian, because it might be
"Heartless" and "offend" the other students.
Keep it up and your coddled children will be in for
a rude awakening years from now, when children from
China and India will be the achievers, and kicking your kids' ass,
if they aren't already.
But at least your kids will be "sensitive."
Talk to a European, or people from other parts of the World,
and see how brutally honest they are.
It's refreshing. When they don't like something, they'll tell you up front.
In this country, what do we do if someone hurts our feelings,
we call a TRIAL LAWYER for "emotional stress." Boo Hoo !
When did we become a country of overweight, over sensitive pussies ?
"You're so mean, you're so heartless."
Politics has always been a heartless game from the right, and the left.
Butch up.
roger37
The usual false equivalency from sophie.
Humor-In-Uniform
Wow, there's some good stuff here guys. I can always count on you to make me smile and think critically as I sit here burning up in Baghdad.
Through my studies of warfare, it seems one thing has changed over time (technology) and one thing has remained the same (human nature). Feeling sorry for people isn't something new, but in the old days, they didn't have the resources and time to provide for the welfare of those that couldn't produce for the betterment of the people. In those days, those folks were cast aside or discarded.
By viewing our modern day country as a system, you can put some objective view to the problem. A life system that carries around to much fat uses a lot of energy just carrying around the fat. The muscles provide for function and work, but are overused not only working, but carrying around the fat. Look at overweight people and they are generally not that healthy....why? Because they carry too much non-productive bulk. This is what we are doing systemically to this country. Liberals, God bless them want to care for everyone and conservatives see that carrying the fat for too long will eventually just kill the system. It's a catch 22, but when you look at the longevity of the country as a whole....in order to flourish, we would have to trim the fat, or turn it into lean muscle. Our current system doesn't motivate those on the tit to want to get off of it, so the viscious cycle will continue.
ukeman
Humor-in-uniform, i think you really carry a broad brush there.
Liberals want a bloated overweight country/system. Really?
Conservatives have the obvious oversimplified answer?
You guys talk about "re-distribution of wealth - socialism", but your jack silent about the discrepancies in who has the wealth and what's happened to the middle class.
Oh no, it's not ok to say "Bush was not conservative" BS. What has "the other side" done for the economy of this country ever?
What about the middle class, the manufacturing in the country?
Isn't it so called conservatives leading the so called "free market" system with its outsourcing, and union busting?
The whole anti reform thing is an obvious right wing defense of insurance gouging and propping up obscene profits off of healthcare.
It's the DINO's too I know, but they are from mostly red states.
Dem pols aren't immune to greed either. But they can sit back and let you righties secure those ill gotten goods for them.
That is not the liberal agenda.
tehixe
@Spohia5: the dining room table speaks again. That's one thing Barney didn't mention -- tables are hard to ignore when they yammer gibberish non-stop.
Johnnyappleseed
It also exists here at home, but lacks the leadership needed to bring it into the daylight.
We will bide our time until it happens, and looking over the political landscape, the 90 trillion dollar debt may just be the percursor to start it.
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n--Y--grumpyguyPicachu
sophia5 - I see a consistency in your posts on this site, i.e. you see the world through your own rose colored glasses. You have one of the most unbalanced an biased perspectives of anybody who posts on this site. In your screed here you natter on about the ills of our nation that are always the result of the evil-doing of liberal left. You never take any responsibility for the mess ya'll have made. The right wing has to a large degree been making policy for the last 15 (and closer to 30) years. If you don't like things then own up to your own neo-con republicans responsibility for them instead of constantly resorting to your straw dog attack on liberals. You are truly one of the most ideologically brain-washed and narrow minded people I have ever encountered. I'll bet you are just a delight to be around in person.
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Natural-Selection
Grumpy....we're not smart enough to do it like Denmark and we have MANY more people. If we tried to do it their way, the ACLU would somehow get involved and it would go back to the way it is now....you gotta know that man! ;-)
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Humor-In-Uniform
Come on now easyrider....I'm a happy guy, but I think you're projecting. I just call it as it is. Heartless? Hardly. Unkind? Only to those that threaten me or my family. Resentful? Nope. Not too lovable? Nope, totally lovable? Angry at the world? Naah, just stupid people.
So, perhaps since this is what's at the top of your thought process, perhaps a little introspection would be in order? ;-)
joymars
Hello?! Japan just defeated its conservative government.
joymars
@sophia5:
Whew! Well, you really stated OUR brand of conservatism quite succinctly. Congrats. It's all about "butching up," isn't it? But there are other brands of conservatism (e.g. Asia's, as other posters have mentioned), and we must not get ourselves confused, as we do perpetually, that ours is THE conservativism, or there is no other kind.
Our national electoral system is two-party winner-take-all. It is therefore essentially conservative as per your definition. That's why the Dem Party inevitably drops the ball and the Repugs spend so much of their waking hours snickering.
But it's become a very boring exercise. People are beginning to see how it doesn't really serve them. Maybe the assumed dichotomy will change. Maybe we'll get a viable third party finally. Then the Repugs will have to loose their snicker and the Dems will have to find their back bone.
BullMoose
Let these deluded lefties dream on. The sleeping giant of Obamacare has caused the moderates and Independents to look again at the smooth talking "communtiy organizer" and the Chicago Rezko crowd. And the Rev. Wright surely gave him spiritual guidance.
2010 both the House and Senate return to adults, and 2012, the Presidency returns from foray into Democrat's socialist ideals.
and the way time is flying faster as you age, it will not be long. Just wonder if this so called bastion of journalism will be here. It is worse than the Daily Kos.
StellaRay
@sophia
There's just so much balderdash in your post it's hard to pick which part to respond to. So I'll just chose the part where you lied your ass off.
"Liberals are referring to dissenters as "Brown Shirts, Nazis."
That would be your folks and there's miles of news video tape to prove it. But you know that and just thought you'd slide the perversities of today's GOP right across the aisle. Just couldn't let you do it. Nope---
Your side owns the signs with Obama tricked out as Hitler, your side owns the morally corrupt position of using the true horrors of Nazi Germany to support your agenda---which you are free to do in this country! That's the final disgusting irony. Your side waves their ugly signs in front of the cameras, shouts whatever they want and then goes home for a nice dinner,
safe and sound with no fear of reprisals.
Tanenhaus says it all when he says "These conservatives today are heartless. They are really heartless." He's got you pegged.
UponFurtherReview
StellaRay wrote:
Your side owns the signs with Obama tricked out as Hitler, your side owns the morally corrupt position of using the true horrors of Nazi Germany to support your agenda---which you are free to do in this country! That's the final disgusting irony. Your side waves their ugly signs in front of the cameras, shouts whatever they want and then goes home for a nice dinner,
safe and sound with no fear of reprisals.
_________________________________
*** If it's "a morally corrupt position" to compare a president to Hitler, then you and your ideological ilk had better come to terms your own sins.
You can't seriously believe that conservatives "own" the president-equals-Hitler comparison.
And if you do, join me in a trip down Memory Lane as we see how another recent president got the exact same "ugly sign" treatment from your side.
http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=612
Too funny!
UponFurtherReview
sophia5 wrote:
When did we become a country of overweight, over sensitive pussies ?
"You're so mean, you're so heartless."
Politics has always been a heartless game from the right, and the left.
Butch up.
___________________________________
*** Well stated, Sophia5.
I see your post has drawn plenty of spitballs from the cheap seats, but I always know I've won the argument when the other side starts attacking me instead of my position.
Similarly, I always know when my ideological side is winning in the marketplace of ideas when our opponents stop challenging what we're saying and start whining about the way we're saying it.
The result is usually what we see in Mr. Siegel's column: an inadvertently funny projection-fest.
Classically, he sobs about conservatives adopting a philosophy in "rigid absolutism that expresses itself in a politics of destruction and mechanical negativity."
Oh, please! Like we aren't witnessing the same absolutism, negativity and politics of destruction from the proponents of government health care?
Let's see ... Pelosi refuses to compromise on the public option. Pelosi calls town hall protesters "Astroturf," despite the fact that many of these folks bring homemade signs and look like greeters at Walmart.
Contrast that with Obama's minions -- the SEIU, ACORN and other rent-a-mobs -- who come to the meetings in identically colored shirts, waving identically printed signs.
Siegel is welcome to his own political fantasies, but given the plummeting poll numbers of Obama, the health care bill and prominent Democrats like Harry Reid and Jon Corzine -- not to mention the recent Gallup poll that found that conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states -- any new book called "The Death of Conservatism" is about as timely as "The 2009 Guide to Stagecoach Repair."
magicman
Actually, there are no booms or busts in a 'real world' economy. That only occurs in a Goldman Sachs regulated Fractional Federal Reserve System, which Thos. Jefferson viewed as a sure fire way for Americans to lose all of their wealth. But what does 'Tommy' know? Right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZM58dulPE&feature=player_embedded
Let's see if anyone can recognize 'truth'.
Hawnzz
I want this book! The author of this article has an impressive vocabulary. I had to look up 4 words. What wonderful insight the book seems to make...
WestVillager
I had to look up revanchism.
khepri
Hats off to you Lee Siegel. Superb article.
puarau
In my adult life, it has been the democratic presidents who left a surplus or were revenue neutral (Carter and Clinton), and of course inversely, Reagan and the Bushes, left us with huge deficits, talk about following the elephants in a parade. Words or deeds, talk is cheap. I loved William F. Buckley (talk about looking up words), especially when he locked horns with Gore Vidal. We all become liberals in heart when we are about to meet our maker.
Johnnyappleseed
puarau I want some of what your on, you must be joking about Carter, who had 25% 9nflation 27% interest rates , forced a bill to make banks and lending institutions make home loans to people who couldn't qualify like everyone else.
Clinton came along and up the ante, to allow those that couldn't qualify to allow welfare checks to be used as income to qualify.
The last Democrat to make a tax cut was John F. Kennedy, get your facts straight.
Buckley was an icon for the brain trusts of this world, sad to see him go.
Picachu
seed - you should share some of your stash too. So the inflation and high interest rates at the end of the Carter admin were entirely the result of things that took place in his 4 years? PLEASE!!! That is what just kills me about you neo-cons - you won't take any responsiblity for what your side screws up. Policy in this country until recently has been bipartisan. You and Sophia5 should hook up.
crymeariver
Seed managed to talk about everything BUT avoid Puarau's assertion that: it has been the democratic presidents who left a surplus or were revenue neutral (Carter and Clinton), and of course inversely, Reagan and the Bushes, left us with huge deficits.
I guess Seed DOES agree that Republican's talk the talk but can't walk the walk!
puarau
jonnyappleseed: Put this in your pipe, home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html
Natural-Selection
Let's see...Carter had our military in ruins and we were so feared that a bunch of Iranian college student's took a bunch of our people hostage. Clinton enabled what the terrorists completed against the Cole and the twin towers. Yes, they didn't spend any money on things that mattered...like...oh, the safety of the country. Yes the Iraq was is arguably misguided, but the financial system was a mess before we went in as a ripple effect of 9/11.
nortonclybourn
And the CIA provided the training and equipment for the mullahs, not to mention printing presses for cranking out counterfeit $100 bills. That's why we should not entrust "the safety of the country" to the idiots in the CIA, whoever is in office. The suggestion that the students attacked only because they thought Carter was a wimp is absurd. They were in part reacting against the CIA enabled state aggression.
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Humor-In-Uniform
Hey easyrider, dude. The world trade towers were being planned long before Bush took office and while Clinton was wagging the dog, they were enabled to carry out their planning.
Bunx05
Sorry Humor: but doesn't the fact that the 9/11 attack was being planned prior to Bush and the fact that his administration had evidence of the need for vigilence and did nothing presuppose that your argument has no real need for partisan targeting? In other words, doesn't your comment prove Bush was just as bad as Carter or Clinton, and thus your argument can't be made for one side of the political spectrum or the other?
I appreciate your service (you have no idea how much I respect it), but I think this argument has gotten off track.
I might even posit that the reason we've seen such large deficits from Republicans in the past is due to LONG term military contracts which last well beyond their presidency. These contracts tend to be spent on military systems and NOT the everyday needs of our service men and women (like armour) or the needs of our veterans (see the fact that the Obama administration has decided to spend so much on veterans to make up for the cuts the Bush administration put into place and to do more; not being partisan, just stating a fact).
JohnnyAces
@Johnnyappleseed and Natural Selection
From what I can summarize you are losing this argument in a major way. You are throwing smoke and mirrors up to responses about deficits. Please resond directly at the core issue of deficits created by Democratic versus Republican administrations. This is a subject that the right has continually sold as their bread and butter (particularly with regard to controlled spending and lower taxes). I'm curious to hear your defense.
convolved
Fantastic article...I'll certainly be reading Mr. Tanenahus' book with your critique in mind.
scottiex2
If conservatism isn't dead, the viscous talking heads who preach it should be. The current line up, Glen Beck, Limbaugh,
Savage etc are all candidates for the 'nervous hospital'.
clearthinker
Conservatism isn't dead. This is such a shock title to hook people like convolved into having a wet dream. Remember, scottie, the liberals have their fair share of nut bag talking heads as well. I could name names, but you get the point.
I would agree with McHugh, this stuff goes in cycles.
Bunx05
I think he means a certain kind of conservatism (much more level headed and steeped in the belief that the government is a tool for reappropriation and the facilitation of states' rights) has died and been replaced with anitgovernment fiscal reactionism by way of cultural "advisers" who posit harsh, abrasive opinions.
roadhunter
Are you sure you can name names? I'd like to see them.
robwriter
Thanks for the lovely book report, Mr. Siegel. At least you're off the topic of healthcare for the moment, a subject about which you know pretty close to nothing.
Johnnyappleseed
Not pretty close, who doesn't know anything about, it only looks good to write about it
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n--Y--zippy29jus1drun
i too was transfixed by buckley. there hasn't been another to take his place. sounds like a very interesting book.
newswoman
Why does everyone feel that Buckley was so great? He was to the manor born, never had to wait tables, mow lawns, caddie or set up pins, like most other Americans of his age. He had no idea how most people live..just one paycheck away from disaster. He was good with words and could talk rings around many people, but being conservative was easy for him like it is for many people with money or being born 'elite'. He did not speak for the middleclass person.
misha1000
Don't forget, Coulter called Christians, 'perfected Jews,' and talked about putting rat poison in Justice Stevens' coffee.
When Jews aren't around, Palin's church preaches that Auschwitz and terror against Israel is devine retribution for not accepting the Christian lord. I saw a video of Hagee telling his congregation that "Hitler was Jewish, as was Karl Marx." He also told them that the anti-Christ would be "Jewish," and "a homosexual."
Huckabee: 'It would be easier to change the Constitution, than change the word of the lord.'
Evangelicals love Israel, but hate Judaism and Jewish culture.
Here's an oxymoron: conservative Jews.
Conservatism can drop dead.
Johnnyappleseed
Misha! Where is the love in your progressive heart?
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newswoman
These uneducated Christians scare me with their Jew hatred. Here we go again...Hitlerism is back and right here in the U.S. Palin is dumb as mud. How she got to the public stage is beyond me.
Johnnorth
Artrhur Schlesinger's analysis of the cycles of American political history supports mcmchugh99's observation. It's clear from this stimulating debate about what sounds like a seminal book that we are in need of new nomenclature .Borrowing from trhe 19th century, Today;s Republican leaders might be called the Know Nothings- and the arrogant left are clearly members of the Know Everything.party. Perhaps better still,- following Humor-in-Uniform we should divide threm between the Fatties (the liberal left) and the Skinnies( (the tight-fisted right).
mcmchugh99
That's right. Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. was also a historian, and described these cycles 100 nears ago. He predicted a reform era in the 1930s long before it happened. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. continued his father's work, and told the Kennedy's and LBJ that the 1960s would be another reform cycle. I think many politicians realized for a long time that something like this was really happening in US political history, and LBJ talked about the cycles in his autobiography "The Vantage Point".
I learned about these cycles from my major professor, Charles Forcey, about 30 years ago, although he called them "waves". He was the one who told me about the double conservative wave in the late-19th Century, which mark Twain called the Gilded Age. This was followed by a double reform wave in 1900-20 that historians call the Progressive Era.
Forcey told me that the 1890s was a near-miss as a reform era since president Grover Cleveland was unable to ride the reform wave; he was too rigid and inflexible in his views. This is where I got the idea that the 1990s was another failed reform wave under Bill Clinton, partially because of his own natural centrism and moderation. At any rate, reform just fizzled on him, and he became like another Grover Cleveland--a conservative Democratic president rather than a great reformer.
Since we had a conservative era for the last 30 years that was longer than the normal length, this is why I think we are going to get a reform wave now that will last at least a decade, maybe longer. It's not going to end in just a year or two, since too many problems were neglected in the Second Gilded Age of the last 30 years.
If we get a double reform wave, then this period really will be a Second Progressive Era.
Bunx05
Well put. That makes perfect sense.
marticampbell
I agree that the pendulum swings back and forth. I am old enough to have experienced it. But if we don't get the money out of the system we are going to end up with the corporations running everything. The parties (liberal and conservative) along with everyone else, except for the very wealthy, will be left by the side of the privatized road. We need, but will probably never get, public funding of elections.
newswoman
In the 1800's, there were 'Panics' about every 10 years due to unbridled capitalism. It happened again under Bush when they took off regulations of companies, banks, etc. From now on I hope we will always regulate capitalists or we, the middle class, will pay, as usual.
UponFurtherReview
newswoman
In the 1800's, there were 'Panics' about every 10 years due to unbridled capitalism. It happened again under Bush when they took off regulations of companies, banks, etc. From now on I hope we will always regulate capitalists or we, the middle class, will pay, as usual.
_______________________________________
*** And you seriously think that we, the middle class, won't pay for the $9 trillion (and counting) deficit the Obama administration has run up for the next 10 years?
Even Geithner recently acknowledged that he couldn't rule out a middle class tax hike.
Or did you actually believe Obama's fairy tale about no tax hike for 95 percent of Americans?
JoeCitezen
Whether or not Obama and Congress spend away at improving life for the Grand Canyon between the Haves and the Have nots (who used to be the middle class) we will be paying for generations on the spending policies of every Republican elected to office for the last umpteen years. Iraq war anyone? No bid Halliburton contracts?? Please folks the numbers are readily available on what political party has spent what while they were in office, look them up and make informed statements. What kills me is that the Repugnants prey on the poorest of the poor in the Midwest with no medical insurance and missing teeth and somehow have them convinced that Obama is evil and could do anything but improve their lot in life.When you are neck deep in crap the best course of action is to grab the rope being offered. Obama is the rope. Save yourselves please!
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bud812
So tell us all what the hell you have ever done to make our country better?You insult the dead that tells me all i need to know about your sorted character!
MixedContent
Oh yeah, The Liberals are the Ruling Class, oppressing all those Nobly Suffering Conservatives. You have *got* to turn me on to your dealer, he obviously gets you some amazing stuff.
SIMIECOCOA
Mixed, I agree that the Liberals are not the ruling class, but they are trying to be and we must stop them at every turn & at all cost.Glenn for Pres.
cbeenthere
BRUCE MAJORS:
TEDDY KENNEDY
TEDDY KENNEDY
TEDDY KENNEDY
TEDDY KENNEDY
TEDDY KENNEDY
WHackwhacker
Major Blowhard - love the purple prose! I await you and yours marching down my street, "come the revolution;" you'll have a little surprise waiting for you!
clearthinker
HA!!!! Your party won't have squat waiting except some diplomacy and apologies.
milarepa
Childish drivel. "Come the revolution" ... how 20th century of you.
mercury
Yes. Bush/Cheney take the country from surplus to deficits and somehow, Kennedy's responsible for 'debt slavery'. You are in some whole, other bizarro reality.
And you sound like a serial killer in waiting. Then again, you're a conservative, so it's tough to tell...
newswoman
What ugly sentiments. You don't have to like Ted Kennedy. Just say so without the smears. We know Kennedy's mistakes, but what about the many other congressmen who have done similar things? Newt Gingrich was having an affair when he castigated President Clinton for the same! He admitted it on TV. Gov. Sanford, etc.
Crapulent, eh? You mean farty.
neverlate
If you fly into Singapore it makes very clear on the Immigration form you fill out on the plane that drug possession is "punishable by death." Is this cruel? They don't have a drug problem.
In Hong Kong you go once a year to the "IRS" and there is someone sitting at a bare desk with only a calculator. he will ask you how much you made last year, and once you tell him, he will multiply that by 12% and ask you kindly to provide a check for that amount. Additionally, it is the tradition for business to provide workers with a bonus equivalent to one month salary at the end of the year- which is close to the tax amount. There are very few homeless people in Hong Kong.
In communist China corporation pay half the income tax that American corporations pay.
In Singapore the have a social net that is based on everyone paying into their own savings account and building up equity over time to cover retirement, education and other such expenses.
There is truth in what mcmchugh99 says, but there also is this dynamism and energy at the small business level thta we seem so intent to destroy in this Country. This is especially true of Obama, who sees small business at odds with elite Liberalism, and wants to tax it out of existence.
BTW: Virtually everyone has a multi currency bank account, where many poorly educated shop owners try to make money trading currencies, something that is probably even beyond the best educated in our Country.
Dynamic capitalism lives in Asia, though hampered by Statism to a large extent
MixedContent
One definite answer: making drug possession punishable by death is not only cruel but utterlly repulsive and stupid. We have a "drug problem" here because of our obsessive focus on the criminalization of what human beings have done forever: get high. You take a small problem and make it into a big, but very profitable, one.
Your conspiracy-theorizing about Obama's supposed wish to destroy small business is based on nothing. Obama does indeed seem to be in bed with the banks, but (here's a news flash) those who own the banks are not liberals.
neverlate
Obama has made it very clear in his tax policy that he sees small business as a financial pinata to fund his big government - crony capitalism extension of George Bush programs.
Repulsive? There is not a drug problem in Singapore, while our acceptance of deviant behavior has created a war zone on our mexican border where innocent people are getting killed and has devastated our urban communities. That is repulsive to me.
AlanD2
neverlate: How can Obama use small business as a financial pinata to fund his big government after giving them tax breaks this year?
Regarding drugs, Prohibition create a war zone in Chicago and other places. Legalizing alcohol terminated the war. I suspect the same thing would happen if we legalized all drugs. This would also save us a lot of tax dollars by cutting our prison population in half.
Johnnyappleseed
Free drug use, it works so well in the Netherlands, look at their problems compared to none in Singapore.
No system works unless those incharge have the guts to do what they say they will do,once they are elected.
Another person using drugs is a choice they made, why should I pay to support bad and poor behavior?
Obama knows little or nothing about small business, he is not alone in that boat, most elected Democrats know even less.
MixedContent
Johnnyappleseed, please specify the problems you are aware of in the Netherlands. Singapore may be your ideal place, but it wasn't what Jefferson and Madison had in mind, nor would most Americans want to live under a regime that has you caned for chewing gum and shot for smoking dope.
Neverlate, it is not our "acceptance of deviant behavior" that has created the problems you describe, it is our non-acceptance of it. Prohibition has again created hugely profitable criminal enterprises that are more than happy to engage in bribery and murder. It's what criminals do.
AlanD2
Johnnyappleseed: Yeah. In a dictatorship like Singapore you can force citizens to do just about anything you want.
Personally, I'll stick with freedom, accepting occasional glitches. Feel free to move to Singapore. In fact, please do.
mercury
neverlate/Appleseed: you two carp about creeping government power under liberals yet you applaud Singapore's draconian social controls?
Typical Conservative denial of reality. Please, oh please move to Singapore.
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MixedContent
Oh, and Communist China is as "Communist" as Augusto Pinochet. Authoritatian, absolutely. Oppressive, you bet. Communist? In name only.
newswoman
Since when are Dems the elitists? They are the ones who care about the middle class, blue collar workers, unions, God bless them, children the poor and the sick and senior citizens. The Reps care about big business, low taxes on the rich and companies, keeping money in off shore accounts, etc. TALK ABOUT ELITISTS!
ortega
"These conservatives today are heartless. They are really heartless."
Oh, really?
How many women have those conservatives let drowning in a car to get away?
cbeenthere
They would rather go after the living, ever heard of a living hell?
cbeenthere
those conservatives.
MixedContent
Chappaquiddick was a fuck-up, no doubt about it. How many conservatives do you think would look better than Ted Kennedy if reduced to the worst thing they ever did, or even the worst pattern and practice they ever engaged in?
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MixedContent
What lack of remorse? Where are you getting your "facts?"
mercury
dabeall! You realize you could apply the same exact sentence to Cheney and Bush over Iraq where the consequences were ten thousand times as severe.
But you never, ever will, you hypnotized sheep. You never will. You've only got the guts to shit on a dead man you only know as a cariacature.
tehixe
A more important question: how many women would those conservatives force to die for their babies, even babies that were fathered by rapists or family members? If they could, it would be 100%. How many women would those conservatives force us to plug into life support, vegetating in the name of sanctity of life, technically dead but still breathing? Again, 100%. Conservatives hate freedom, they'd impose their religious mores on everyone else in a heartbeat, given the chance.
The only freedom they care about is the freedom for the rich to exploit the poor, because it's the rich who get them re-elected. It's a simple, greed-driven fee for services. They want to turn our government into a pay-to-play system, a system that's on sale to the highest bidder. To hell with the people who elected them. What's so wrong about it is that Republican voters are so blinded by identity politics that all they see is whether the politician is One of Us. As long as he is, he could grind them into the dirt, and they'd be too ignorant (or too misinformed by Faux News) to recognize it.
princeminski
This response is, I think, the most to the point. A true conservative would be repulsed by the concept of choosing leaders on the basis of whom one would most like to drink beer with. Or ending an awkward sentence with a preposition.
Johnnyappleseed
One thing about it tehixe, you are full of it.
C.Everret Koop former Surgeon General, who was a OB (obstetrician) for over thirty years stated he never had a case that the mothers life was threatened enough to preform an abortion, rape and incest are minor compared to the abortions done as a means of getting rid of an unwanted baby, it's amounts to surgical birth control, nothing more, nothing less.
mercury
Johnnyappleseed your ignorant response exemplifies not only the heartless conservative but the brainless one as well.
Show me the source for the Koop quotation, liar.
tehixe
Johnnyappleseed: Assuming you didn't make the quote up, who cares? It is what you call anecdotal evidence, i.e. it may as well not be evidence. One doctor's experience doesn't prove anything at all.
Regardless, the point is hypocrisy and hatred of freedom. You say you don't like government intrusion in private lives, and yet you want the government to intrude into potentially every marriage, every pregnancy, and every end of life decision. You are entitled to your opinion on abortion. I respect it. I even agree with it, to an extent. But unlike you, I recognize that I do not have the right to force people to do things my way. This is something that is a deeply personal moral, philosophical, and religious choice. The fact that you want to jail or execute those who make the choice differently from you is what makes you so despicable. That is why you and yours are heartless.
AlanD2
ortega: I seem to remember that Laura Bush killed somebody by running a stop sign.
Grow up. Everybody in America makes mistakes. It's just that some are bigger than others. We all need forgiveness - not hatred.
Johnnyappleseed
Or sucked the brains out of an unborn child, and aborted it?
AlanD2
Johnnyappleseed: This is legal under the law of our land. Do do believe in the rule of law, don't you?
By the way, most of the abortions done in the manner you describe are done to preserve the woman's capability to have more children. The fetuses are typically already dead or have such devastating genetic abnormalities that they could not survive very long after birth.
newswoman
Oh go suck an egg. You have no idea about abortions. First of all, late term abortions are SELDOM performed. And when they are it is because the fetus is deformed in a way that it could not live outside the womb: i.e. it has 1/3 of a brain, or the kidneys are outside the body. As for abortion in general; they are legal!! Get it? It is nobody's business if I or my daughters have an abortion. You have no idea what happens in a person's life that they might consider the prospect. Mind you own business.
mercury
How many US soldiers, both men and women, have lost lives and limbs in a war which had no reason to be fought?
How many people in New Orleans did Conservatives let drown?
Then I'm sure neither of those things makes any sort of dent on the shriveled little thing you call a conscience.
Nemo888
What decade were you last in Asia??? Right now China is emulating Canada in its tax rates and laws. They are also working very hard on trying to get a public health care system. Mainly by studying various European systems.
Americans are sad. Especially the educated ones. They think they are special and elite when all they have managed to do is become what most of the world considers average.
Bunx05
I agree with you to a point. Americans are victims of our own success over the years. We are not very globally conscientious. Part of that is due to our geographic isolation; part due to our isolationist mentality as a nation. We perceive ourselves to be the best at everything (and in many respects we are very good at certain things), but over the years we allowed our successes and mentality to make us complacent. We have trouble adapting to the realities not only of the world in general, but also of our own nation. We choose not to see many ways we could improve because improving would mean we weren't perfect before. The rest of the world sees us as "sad" or arrogant, but America is a big place with big issues.
There's a great deal of spirit for change here. We are a people (as disjointed as we are) who can rise to the betterment of not only ourselves but our fellow man. The founders wanted that for their country. They wanted us to be an example of change and leadership in the world. We read the Constitution and think that it is a document of stone, inflexible and unchangeable, but that isn't the case. Our government was designed to change to adapt to evolve. We don't always agree with what it should be changing to, but it was never meant to be stagnant.
I respect Reagan in a lot of ways, but he was wrong; Government is not the problem. Our individual complacency and fear of change is. There's a reason all the Kennedy's and Obama were and are so well liked and respected. They spoke and speak to our aspirations as a country and as people. They called us all to do more and be better. And they used the government to make that happen.
We aren't "sad ... special and elite" (most of us don't see ourselves as betters), but we are a bit lost right now. Over the past decade we've wandered off our track, led primarily by our government. We've engaged in torture (or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques if you prefer). We've cut support to our impoverished (particularly by way of programs that help people help themselves and become the muscle and not the fat of our nation, to borrow from an earlier post). And we've lost our ability for rational national discourse (as can be seen by the town halls where protest has given way to disruption). We've been in the wilderness, but now it's time to find our way back to the path we created.
Thank you.
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