Amos's River of Justice

Category: U.S. Politics

  • Who Are the Progressives’ Friends?

    I’m not trying to end to our conversation with people in these categories.  I’m trying to clarify the position of progressives by comparison with competing voices in the “progressive” movement.  I put progressive in quotation marks because there are non-progressive participants in this movement. In fact, there are categories of participants that we may not be aware of. I’m thinking of socially conservative Marxists, progressive Trump supporters, and the Greeks. Everyone who differs with us is important for purposes of comparison if nothing else. But who are the progressives’ friends?

    We can learn from our exchanges with them if we have the courage to ask hard questions and disagree when necessary.  But if we keep silent about our differences the conversation can’t help but be empty and purposeless, and it will become vulnerable to special interests.  The consequences of capitulation on our part will no doubt be very unpleasant.

    Aside from enriching our debates, many of these ‘voices’ have served our causes.  One individual in particular has worked hard to advance our agenda for the environment.  We could not have accomplished the things Pope Francis has accomplished in such a short time and I plan to remember what he has done and honor him for his service to us.  However, I think the time has come to identify what is American in the progressive conversation and for that matter, what is progressive about it.

    Occupy Wall Street and Marxism

    Since Occupy Wall Street burst on the scene we’ve seen a lot of Marxist rhetoric from the alternative media.  Most people who subscribe to these channels don’t know anything about Marxism except that it claims to be a solution to our present troubles.  Likewise, they don’t know anything about Occupy Wall Street.

    Unfortunately, it is likely that the agenda some of our allies are espousing will keep everything the same.  For example Caleb Maupin, a “Marxist” on YouTube, has been insisting that Marxism has always been socially conservative.  This is a direct challenge to progressive support for Roe v Wade. Similar to right-wing pundits, he resorts to a litany of Margaret Sanger’s racism and Malthusianism to justify his position and to ‘prove’ that Roe v Wade was a misguided piece of legislation from the beginning.

    It is also important for progressives to speak frankly about Roe v Wade and how it constrains our conversation.  The right for a woman to obtain an abortion–which is a medical procedure and not technically a political issue–is a very low bar as far as women’s rights are concerned. It is sad that we are forced to continually fight for it.  Unfortunately, the fight for Roe v Wade, which is already the law of the land, is as progressive as we are allowed to be in this political climate.  I regret this situation while I acknowledge the fight as necessary.  I also regret the way we are forced to be cheerleaders for abortion in response to conservatives’ obsession with it.

    Was Occupy Wall Street Socially Conservative?

    I believe Maupin was associated with Occupy Wall Street, which also claimed to have a Marxist foundation. Was OWS proposing socially conservative policies too?  This possible association is pretty enlightening, given that OWS temporarily took over our conversation in its early days. Were they proposing their own agenda for the conversation?

    This leads me to wonder whether the mutual admiration expressed between OWS and Vatican II Catholics indicates a deeper alliance than we realize.  Again, this is not a rejection of their ideas.  It is a request for clarification.

    For progressives, social conservatism usually implies control of women. This is not a progressive position.

    Reproductive Rights Are Not Faith-based

    Some will say that women have always dealt with social control and the country has more important things to worry about at this time.  That may be true, but what if the problems we are facing are a result of our culture’s control of women?   I’ve written about this in the past and I will write more in the future.

    Marxism on Population Control

    Another Marxist, Loren Goldner, claims that humans don’t have population limits like other species do because humans continually interact with the environment to create new environments.

    The universalism of Marx rests on a notion of humanity as a species distinct from other species in its capacity to periodically revolutionize its means of extracting wealth from nature, and therefore is free from the relatively fixed laws of population which nature imposes on other species.1

    This is clearly a matter of faith and I completely disagree with it.  I also believe it is contrary to the progressive agenda which advocates slowing population growth as much as possible and finding ways to care for the population we do have.  It is my understanding that this is the reason we fight for better management of the environment.

    Marx and Engels Use Class Analysis for Male-Female Relations

    Goldner’s praise of Marx and Engels on the importance of quality relations between men and women falls into this discussion about how humanity creates its own environment.  Basically Marxists deal with this issue under the heading of class.  This of course, diminishes the standing of women. On the contrary, I would argue that male-female relations are in a class of their own.

    Male-female relations should be decided by customs within the extended family, not by Marxist theory or work arrangements. However, Marxists don’t want to talk about this any more than capitalists do.  They would prefer to discuss same-sex marriage and gender rights. That way, they don’t have to make any changes to the fundamental position of women.

    Same-Sex Marriage and Trans Rights

    I agree that discrimination against gays and trans-people must be illegal, but the interesting thing in this development is the lack of attention to the position of women.  Why do we see this convergence of the left and right on women?

    It is clear to me that right-wing talking points, regardless of whether they come from the right or the left, cannot refute the current progressive movement.  Our agenda is the only sensible response being offered at this time to the realities of human existence.  But if the “Marxists” are successful in winning over the progressive movement, nothing will change because their policy proposals are identical to the Right and the Democratic establishment in the only ways that really matter. They negatively influence our relationship with nature and the way our culture deals with women.

    Loren Goldner on Marx and Civil Society

    Goldner envisions the following options given our current predicament:

    The fundamental question before the international left today is whether or not Marx was (as this writer believes) right to think that civil society could be abolished…on a higher level (which preserves and deepens the positive historical achievements of civil, that is, bourgeois society) and not on a lower level, as happened in Soviet-type societies. The second question, which follows hard on the first, is: if Marx was wrong about the critique of civil society, and was in fact a protototalitarian, what, if anything remains valid in his critique of political economy and its programmatic implications?…

    I haven’t yet said anything under the heading of progressive Trump supporters.  It seems to me this category overlaps with the people who supported Jill Stein in 2016 and those who are now arguing that Trump is better on foreign policy than Biden.  It also overlaps with those who have been refuting the DNC’s claim of Russian interference.

    I agree that the DNC is an embarrassment in many ways, but their opponents’ arguments verge on support for Putin, who is seen by many Christians as a champion for Christianity.  I would argue that there is one good reason to vote for Joe Biden and it can’t be rationalized in order to drum up support for Trump.

    Trump’s Covid Response

    During the covid19 pandemic Donald Trump has actually carried out policies that he knew would kill more people in blue states, and especially people of color.  In other words, he has not only admitted to homicidal tendencies, he has acted on this impulse.  Any progressive who argues that we should consider Trump as a candidate should not be trusted.  We don’t know if Joe Biden will be better, but at least he has not admitted to being homicidal!

    Unfortunately, the DNC is replaying Hillary’s 2016 choice of a vice presidential running mate.  Biden’s new running mate, Kamala Harris, is like a clone of Tim Kaine in her unpopularity with progressives.  Therefore I think it is possible that the Democrats don’t want to win in 2020 and that they didn’t want to win in 2016.  The only choice left to us is to turn out in such large numbers that Joe Biden wins in spite of himself.

  • Progressives Grieve, Conservatives Posing as Democrats Gloat

    I want to urge activists to use caution in the post-Bernie stage of this election cycle.  I’m a little worried about the tone the analyses have taken–not for Bernie, I’m worried for the activists.  It is crucial to the health of the movement to be able to put things in their proper perspective, especially now.  At this time the pundits are apparently just coming to terms with the fact that Bernie is out and they have to watch the smirking idiots in Washington calmly go on with their plans.  I won’t deny it is disgusting to watch–one can’t help but think they should be more afraid than they are, and yet their so-called plans lurch determinedly on.  If you think the job of government is to serve the people, it seems to go forward without rhyme or reason.

    Still, it is not time to lash out.  For one thing, it’s not over yet.  I’m not implying that our dreams still might miraculously come true, although if the world makes any kind of sense at all they should come true.  What I’m saying is that at this point we have no choice but to wait and hope.  Rather than tear everything down, we should be using this time to reconnoitre.

    We have learned some important facts during the course of these two campaigns.  For example, we’ve seen that our people in Congress have a firm grip on the mechanism of government at every level–including the press which is not even supposed to be a branch of government–and they have no fear of repercussions.

    My own analysis of Sanders’ campaign would go something like this: we could have used our time better in the interim between the two campaigns.  I would also like to suggest that some of Bernie’s million volunteers were not really Bernie supporters.  I believe that if our progressive pundits had volunteered by making calls and knocking on doors, they would have the same concern.  Who were the volunteers who sabotaged the good volunteers you ask?  Ask yourself what you would do if it was your job to keep Bernie out of the White House?  Wouldn’t you sign up to volunteer so you could sabotage the attempts by real supporters trying to do their job?  It would be so easy–you could be virtually anonymous.  Finally, I would like to ask the pundits how they thought Bernie could win by being humiliated at the polls in all of the remaining states, which I believe would certainly have happened.  If you didn’t see that coming after Iowa I’m not going to waste my time explaining it.  Anyway, I’ve already written about it here.

    To continue with my analysis, we jumped into this torrent in the middle of the river with no preparation.  It wasn’t our fault.  When I started talking about the 2016 presidential campaign, I had in mind the responsibility of citizens to pay attention to elections and to vote.  The presidential election was on the horizon and it seemed like a good idea.  The thing is, no one knew that Bernie would take the country by storm and that we would have to stand by while those devils took it from us.  All I hoped back then is that his campaign would add a little sanity to the downward spiral of our republic.

    I still think we have the responsibility to vote, but I clearly had some unrealistic expectations.  I thought we could choose our candidates based on what we understood to be the most pressing needs of the nation.  That would be our second lesson–we can’t.  The election process, at least at the presidential level, is nothing more than a long, expensive spectacle.  Oh, we still have free speech alright, but what does that do for us?  It saves us from the punishment of cement overshoes for speaking our mind, which is a good thing, but unfortunately it lasts a lot longer than cement overshoes.  At least with cement overshoes we’d be sleeping with the fishes, whereas elections never end.  And no, this is not an invitation for Bernie’s former supporters to check out.  We’re going to find a way to go on and this is how you do that–by calmly thinking it over.  Well, maybe not so calmly in every case.

    Now let’s turn our attention to these people who claim to be Democrats, but who have been treating us like poor relations at the reading of the will.  Who exactly are these people against whom we’ve been sending our own personal gladiator, Bernie Sanders, to do battle?  Where do they fit in the overall scheme of American history and world history?  Let’s look at them first in the context of American history.

    I won’t keep you in suspense.  The explanation is too long and I’m afraid you’ll forget the question by the time I get to the answer.  Our Democratic establishment is kin to the conservatives who defeated the liberal Republicans in the 1960s and 70s.  How do I know this?  Because the main issue that divided the Republican Party at that time was the New Deal.  Of course now the Conservatives are all about social issues, while back in the sixties they used anti-Communism as a rallying point for bringing the GOP together, but they kept their animosity toward the American middle class.  The liberal Republicans were in favor of the New Deal and the conservatives were against it.  The Clintons have always been on board with this conservative focus.

    We know that Hillary Clinton was a Young Republican and that she supported the great conservative hope, Barry Goldwater.  Of course now she makes a joke of it but I’ve never heard her renounce his ideas, have you?  You might be interested to know that her father used the same tactic.  He ran for a local office as a Democrat, although he was a Republican, and then switched back to being a Republican. I only wish Hillary Clinton had the decency to switch back!

    Fast forward to the Clinton administration.  Bill Clinton did battle against the middle class on several fronts, the most egregious assault being NAFTA, but also including financial deregulation with the end of the Glass Steagall Act, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  Interesting isn’t it, that certain Democrats accuse others of not being Democrats when they are the ones who are not Democrats?

    You might want to read about how the conservative Republicans took over the party.  It’s explained in a book, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP by Marry C. Brennan.  ((Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP, the University of North Carolina Press, 1995))

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Criminal State

    There are only two political rivals in the world today: organized crime and the state.  It is true that there are many seemingly valid state ideologies vying for attention, but they are mostly different versions of the same idea, none of which defend the state in the way it needs to be defended.  These versions include advocacy for shrinking the state, austerity, theocracy, xenophobia and zionism, neoliberalism and libertarianism.  Marxism also remains part of the conversation, but the Marxists are merely a convenient and irrelevant target for the conservative versions of the idea listed above.  I say irrelevant because the Marxists have mistaken notions about the state and these notions render them useless in the fight against organized crime.

    James Cockayne warns that a failure to understand how mafias work has led to the overlooking of a major force in global affairs.  What we are seeing today are the effects of a purposeful strategy for controlling the planet’s resources, and this strategy is a direct challenge to the authority of states.  It represents the imposition of an alternate form of governmentality—in other words, a mental framework or operating system.  The only entity capable of resisting organized crime is an efficient state. (James Cockayne, ”Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime″, Oxford University Press, 2016)

    I think it’s obvious that  something similar to what happened in Italy after the World War Two is happening in the United States today.  Just like in Italy, the ruling class in the United States would rather prop up a criminal state than give any credence to the political left.  

    According to Cockayne’s book, the rise of organized crime was not inevitable.  The state’s silence, along with the media’s silence, has enabled it to gain power.  However, he doesn’t advocate direct confrontation, which most definitely would not work anyway.  He argues instead that states cannot simply disappear in this globalized world—they must learn to compete in the market for government.  A state must demonstrate that it is an effective, credible, rewarding system of government, and the people must understand this and choose to be governed by the state rather than the other options becoming available, from ISIS to the transnational gang model of the maras.  Otherwise, other forms of governmentality will continue to grow (309).

  • The Conservative Internationalism of Neo-Conservatives

    realism versus liberal internationalism

    The traditions of American foreign policy that most people are familiar with are realism and liberal internationalism.  Realists are usually conservatives or Republicans, for example Eisenhower and Ford, while liberal internationalists are usually liberals or Democrats, for example Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter.  But these divisions broke down during the Reagan administration.  This led to the rise of conservative internationalism.  However, conservative internationalism existed before the breakdown of these divisions.  This explains the Conservative Internationalism of Neo-Conservatives.

    Conservative Internationalism versus Embassy Protectors

    According to one author, this school of foreign policy has been a constant presence in American politics.  The arrest of the embassy protectors at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC seems to be straight from the playbook of Conservative Internationalism.  So where have the Conservative internationalists been hiding?

    Reagan is one of the heroes of conservative internationalists.  He opposed both the realist containment strategy of Richard Nixon and the liberal internationalist human rights campaign of Jimmy Carter. Instead, he adopted a strategy that used force or the threat of force assertively, as realists recommended, but aimed at the demise of communism and the spread of democracy, as liberal internationalists advocated.  Reagan’s policies didn’t adhere to either of these foreign policy traditions, but he was not unique among American presidents.  According to a Hoover Institution article, conservative internationalism draws historical validation from Thomas Jefferson, James K. Polk, and Harry Truman.

    Tenets of Conservative Internationalism

    So how does this school of foreign policy explain the arrest of the embassy protectors contrary to international law and the Geneva Convention?  The Hoover Institution lists eleven tenets of Conservative Internationalism. The first tenet, the goal of expanding freedom, asserts that free countries achieve legitimacy in foreign affairs by taking decisions independently or working together through decentralized institutions.

    Thus, conservative internationalists give priority to liberty over equality and work to free countries from tyranny before they recognize these countries as equal partners in international diplomacy. Jefferson and Polk were unequivocal about expanding liberty, even if it involved imperialism, because they believed that liberty would eventually bring greater equality. By contrast liberal internationalists give priority to equality over liberty and grant all nations, whether free or not, equal status in international institutions, because they believe treating countries equally will eventually encourage liberty. For conservative internationalists, legitimacy in foreign affairs derives from free countries taking decisions independently or working together through decentralized institutions; for liberal internationalists, legitimacy derives from all countries, free or not, participating equally in universal international organizations.

    The remaining tenets justify the tendency of conservative internationalists to use realism or liberal internationalism, or both, with unrestrained aggression.   Take for example their statement that poverty and oppression are not enough to trigger intervention, that there must be a physical effect on the United States, such as the threat posed by terrorism or oil disruption.  They get around this requirement by saying that preemptive and preventative actions will sometimes be necessary, due to the difficulty of predicting physical effects.

    The Use of Force is Implied

    Because their goals are more ambitious than liberal internationalism or realism, conservative internationalists expect to use more force.  Consider their use of the accusation against leaders who use force against their own people that they can’t be expected to cooperate with the United States either.  This has been used in the past to justify unilateral force.  Liberal internationalists preferred to work with the League of Nations and the UN, whereas under conservative internationalism, diplomacy is just another word for reconstruction after the use of force.

    The arrest of the embassy protectors can be explained by the fact that conservative internationalists dislike international institutions, especially if they are successful.  They want small government, not centralized government.

    Identifying the Neo-Conservative Presence

    A review of this book in the American Conservative identifies this school of foreign policy as ‘old wine in new bottles’, or the re-baptism of neo-conservatism.

    This review was refuted by Henry R. Nau, the author of the Hoover Institution article.  One of Nau’s arguments against the identification with neo-conservatism is that the neo-conservatives started out as Democrats.

    Many neocons, however, were liberals not conservatives, advocating social engineering at home and abroad; and some democratic realists were imperialists, seeking to gain or maintain American hegemony.

    The problem with this distinction is that the neocons have not been straight with us about their history.  There was a neocon presence in the German Conservative Revolution.  The following summary is from a description of a History 330 course at Amherst.edu, German Conservative Revolution and the Roots of the Third Reich.

    It is asserted that Germany’s right wing intellectuals, who identified themselves with a German “Conservative Revolution”, played a fateful role in the ideological formation of national socialism in the wake of the Great War.  They ‘defied’ traditional divisions between the Left and Right, opposed parliamentary democracy and royalist reactionary ‘Wilhelminian’ conservatism, as well as Liberalism and Marxism.  They attempted to reshape theology, legal thought, race biology, geography, and political philosophy.

    Although many of its members criticized the Nazi Party, this had nothing to do with the Party’s anti-Semitism.  Some of them collaborated with the Nazi state and shared its fate, but the dissenters were able to escape condemnation and wield a continuing influence.

    If you’re uncomfortable with neo-conservative foreign policy but you can’t quite figure out how former Democrats became neo-cons, this might explain it.  They were not Democrats; they were Conservative Internationalists.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Is something Fishy About the MAGA Story?

    When Pope Francis was in Ireland as part of the World Meeting of Families Archbishop Viganò wrote a bombshell letter that monopolized the news cycle. Now Francis is in Panama for World Youth Day and a story about MAGA hat wearing Catholic school boys from Kentucky is still going strong. Throw in the Koch Brothers and their connections to right-wing Catholic circles, Kentucky politics and Catholic business schools, and it begins to look like a conspiracy.

    Okay I suppose it could be a coincidence, but we should probably at least give these boys and their teachers the benefit of the doubt. We know the Kochs control Kentucky, probably including the schools, but we apparently expected them to think like us anywat.

     

     

  • Conservatives in Liberals’ Clothing

    An opinion published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal argues that there is nothing surprising about Trump era populism. It is a natural consequence of liberal democracy. This is a strange argument considering the fact that the same article portrays conservatives and their populist supporters as representatives of the liberal tradition. The argument goes something like this: In liberal democracies an ‘imperious ruling elite’ imposes laws, norms and practices that radiate disdain for the people’s beliefs and endanger their way of life. These ‘elites’ conspire across party lines against the less educated and the less wealthy. Their efforts are fostered by the mainstream press, social media, the entertainment industry and universities. Furthermore, all of these institutions are dominated by progressive elites and so they have contempt for conservatism. As a consequence, “…conservative elites and many regular voters find themselves bound together by a common political opponent.”

    The solution, according to this article, is a ‘restoration’ of liberal education—by conservatives. The author actually states that the task of a liberal education is to furnish a lively appreciation for the origins of modern conservatism! How have they been able to pull this off, you ask? Are Americans completely crazy? Well, no. Americans are in a maze constructed by some very clever people. One of their tactics in the building of this maze has been pseudo-historical. They ignore everything that happened before the French Revolution. The author of this article traces conservatism back to 1790 when Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke mounted a campaign against the influence of French revolutionaries, who he accused of trying to perfect politics by eradicating tradition and transforming humanity.

    “Burke replied that the British people were fine. Their traditions and communities nurtured political freedom, which gave tradition and community room to develop and flourish.”

    And the story moves resolutely forward from there. More than 150 years later, William F. Buckley ‘renewed’ this relationship between the Right and the people. He was a classical liberal who favored free markets and limited government; he was also a traditionalist dedication to Christian morality.

    At this point we begin to suspect that this alliance between the Right and the people is a top-down arrangement, with conservative elites persuading the people that liberty and limited government advance their long-term interests. This is not propaganda invented by the writer of the Wall Street Journal article. It is a true-to-life snapshot of America’s history through the eyes of conservatives. However, the conservative timeline the article describes is revealing.

    The political foundations of classical liberalism go back much further than those of conservatism. The Encyclopedia Britannica article that I cited in the previous article traces liberalism to events that took place in the 16th century.

    Due to a slow process of commercialization and industrialization, the feudal stratification of society began to dissolve. This process, together with the influence of the Renaissance and the spread of Protestantism, led to social instability. A remedy was needed and that remedy was monarchical absolutism. Under this system, each ruler tried to unify his realm by enforcing conformity to Roman Catholicism or some form of Protestantism. This worked for a while, but it eventually it culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), which destroyed much of Europe.

    In countries where neither faction was victorious, there was the gradual acceptance of toleration as the lesser of two evils. In countries where one creed dominated it was widely accepted that prosperity and order were more important than the citizens’ beliefs. In this way order was reestablished. But because the economy remained highly centralized and hierarchical, prosperity was limited to the princes.

    Under absolutism the economic system was controlled by the ambitions of national rulers who based their policies on mercantilism. Mercantilism was a school of thought that advocated government intervention in a country’s economy to increase state wealth and power. Because this intervention served established interests and inhibited everyone else, it led to a challenge by members of the new middle class. This challenge was a significant factor in the great revolutions that took place in the 17th and 18th centuries in both England and France, including the English Civil Wars (1642-51), the Glorious Revolution (1688), the American Revolution (1775-83), and the French Revolution (1789). Classical liberalism is a result of those revolutions.

    So you see, revolutions had already transpired in Burke’s England. There were differences in the French Revolution, but they can be explained by the differences in French and English history, mainly regarding the Reformation. The point is that the English did experience violent revolutions.

    In the English Civil Wars, the forces of Parliament defeated and executed Charles I. Subsequently, the Glorious Revolution led to the abdication and exile of James II and the division of power between the King, his ministers, and Parliament. Over time, this new structure of the English government became the model for liberal political movements in other countries.

    The political ideas behind these revolutions were given formal expression in the work of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Locke in particular believed that revolution is justified when the sovereign fails to protect the person and property of individuals and to guarantee their natural rights to freedom of thought, speech and worship. It is likely that he began writing his major political work, Two Treatises of Government (1690), to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

    By 1690, the year Locke published his Treatises, politics in England had become a contest between two loosely related parties, the Whigs and the Tories. These parties were the ancestors of Britain’s modern Liberal Party and Conservative Party, respectively. (Locke was a Whig.) Locke and the early liberals worked to free individuals from two forms of social constraint—religious conformity and aristocratic privilege—which had been maintained and enforced through the powers of government.

    “The aim of the early liberals was thus to limit the power of government over the individual while holding it accountable to the governed.”

    This is not quite the liberty of which American conservatives speak so fondly. Their version belongs to a political ideology called liberal conservatism.

    “Liberal conservatism (represented in the United States by the Republican Party) incorporates the classical liberal view of minimal government intervention in the economy, according to which individuals should be free to participate in the market and generate wealth without government interference. However, individuals cannot be thoroughly depended on to act responsibly in other spheres of life, therefore liberal conservatives believe that a strong state is necessary to ensure law and order and social institutions are needed to nurture a sense of duty and responsibility to the nation.”

    This mistrust of the average individual is justified within the corresponding political philosophy. Liberal conservatives hold to the idea of natural inequality. This differs from aristocratic conservatism only in its justification. Aristocratic conservatism rejects the principle of equality as something inconsistent with human nature.

    In Western Europe liberal conservatism is usually regarded as center-right, and is the dominant form of conservatism, especially in Northern Europe. It can support civil liberties along with some socially conservative positions. This took a slightly different form in the United States, where the founding fathers were among the most dramatic proponents of the liberal assault against authoritarian rule. The result of this extreme opposition to authoritarian rule seems rather counterintuitive.

    “In the United States conservatives often combine the economic individualism of classical liberals with a Burkean form of conservatism that emphasizes the natural inequalities between men and the irrationality of human behavior as the basis for the human drive for order and stability, and the rejection of natural rights as the basis for government.”

    Note the contradiction in the claim that natural inequalities and the irrationality of human behavior are the basis for the human drive for order and stability. It seems to refer to two classes of people—those who are naturally unequal, and those with a drive for order and stability. Perhaps it would make more sense if the second mention of the word ‘human’ was changed to ‘elite’: ‘the elite drive for order and stability’.

    Progressives often wonder why conservatives vote against their own interests, but now we can see that it isn’t really that surprising. First, there is the confusion of the term ‘liberal’, enabled by the fact that conservative history ignores the events that inspired liberalism. Then there is the conservative program of convincing people that if they vote against their own interests it will be good for them in the long-term.

    And there is a third tactic not yet mentioned. If all else fails fear has been proven useful, and the list of enemies is endless: liberals, immigrants, people of color, Jews….

  • What Are We Fighting For and What Are We Fighting Against?

    It appears to be true that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. According to Anton Shekhovtsov, Russia is also responsible for the rise of far-right fringe politicians and ideologues in Europe. In his book, Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, Shekhovtsov explains how this came to be and how the coalition of Russian politicians with fringe far-right characters, has given each of them influence that they could never have achieved alone.

    Before I go on, I should mention a problem I have with this book. This problem can be summed up by the fact that Shekhovtsov supports Ukraine’s entry into NATO. In other words, he tends to interpret the phenomenon from a neocon’s perspective. However he provides copious citations for each chapter and, if that is not enough for progressive readers, please consider the election of Donald Trump and his far-right echo chamber in Europe and South America.

    Progressives were correct to reject the expansion of NATO in Ukraine—it was the favorite project of trigger-happy warmongers at the helm of the US government. However, in my view this book demonstrates the futility of a military response. It also makes the case that the return of the arms race has as much to do with far-right ideology as it does with neocon hubris. Neo-fascists have dreamed of a third world war since the 1940s. And now they have a man in the White House.

    The most important thing I got from this book, and the best reason for voting today in the midterm election, is that the ultimate goal of this coalition is the destruction of Western liberal democracy. Given his obvious bias in this matter it’s not surprising that Shekhovtsov ignores the part neoliberalism has played in the destruction of liberal democracy, but his approach has had a positive effect on me. It helped me realize that both of our major political parties have lost the true meaning of ‘liberalism’.

    It can be argued that in the 2016 election Bernie Sanders was the sole representative of the liberal tradition. This would explain why both the corporate Democrats and the right-wing Republicans were so desperate to keep him down. In fact, they appeared to conspire with each other in this goal. Liberal democracy truly is under attack, but it is no longer embodied by the US government. For example, look at the conservative pundits who actually think the word ‘liberal’ is a bad word. In reality, liberalism is the cornerstone of our republic.

    A frightening conclusion that can be drawn from this book is that Donald Trump never intended to make America great, whatever that means. His affinity with the global far right can be seen in his infatuation with nuclear rearmament, his encouragement of white nationalism, his stance toward China, his tariffs, his desire to abolish NATO, and many other policies. It therefore follows that he shares the far right’s central precept, which is hatred of liberal democracy.

    Please see Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on liberalism.. It reveals that our government once had the ability to respond to economic conditions, whereas the current global regime has no intention of responding to conditions of any kind. This may be explained—at least in part—by the influence of non-American and/or un-American actors in our electoral system and in our media.

  • Kavanaugh’s Hearing and the Incivility of a Conquered People

    I would not say the same things about Orin Hatch that I have said about Jeff Flake, but only because I firmly believe he would fly over here and zap me, and he wouldn’t need a plane to do it. As I write, I’m listening to him talk about poor, pitiful Brett Kavanaugh and like everything else that has happened since Bernie’s beautiful campaign it makes my heart hurt.

    As I said in the last post, I know that what I am going to say will make no difference in the behavior of our Congress, nor will it undo what has been done to the Supreme Court. Nor will it head off the inevitable terrors that await the human race as a result. Only Divine Providence can do that. I’m writing this because unless someone challenges the reality suggested by this hearing, and by the gloating of the committee members who controlled its course and outcome, it has the potential to destroy the sanity of the American people and the world.

    When I began this conversation I assumed the Great Recession and the chaos in the Middle East would inspire contrition. I assumed policymakers would be willing to change course. Clearly I was wrong, but I didn’t fully realize just how wrong until the 2016 election. This election and its aftermath have demonstrated that what we see around us today is preferable in their minds to order and cooperation. Chaos is a choice.

    We have been told that the important thing in the Kavanaugh process was civility. We have heard at least one Senator lament that it was tearing us apart. But what we actually see is that rudeness and adolescent hilarity is preferable to civility, as long as it leads them to so-called victory.

    We don’t have to re-litigate the Kavanaugh hearing to test this premise. There is plenty of evidence in our elections, in both the political processes and the policies of each successive administration. But of course, the most abundant evidence is in the Supreme Court itself. Corruption in the judiciary of a great republic is the height of incivility.

    Civility is not a veneer. It has deep roots, as does incivility. But the grandfatherly men who defended the honor of Brett Kavanaugh today seemed completely unaware that their actions caused this upraor.

  • Atta Boy Republicans

    Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing is the cherry atop Congress’s infernal sundae. We the people don’t dare ask what’s inside those lumpy scoops of ice cream and that oily chocolate sauce, but there is no doubt that the cherry is the most loathsome part of it.

    Unfortunately, no one in Congress will bat an eye at my analysis. Anything I might say will roll off their backs just as long as they’re getting what they want. And if they are somehow forced to respond they’ll just look demurely at the floor like Jeff Flake, who recently pulled out all the stops with his long-suffering, hang-dog look. Hey, it’s the best he could do at short notice. He thought he could escape into the elevator but when the door failed to block his constituents he was forced to listen to their outrage. Still, that is a small price to pay for the freedom to ignore voters’ demands while living on a government salary. Now he claims to be in favor of an FBI investigation but I’m not holding my breath. The Republicans probably hope an investigation will improve their chances in the midterm election, but the Kavanaugh appointment will go through just the same.

    Flake reminds me of my black Lab. She has a trick of acting like she wants to go outside, and then half-way to the door she gets a sly look on her face and goes back to her kennel. She does this because I taught her to expect a biscuit when she goes to her kennel. To state the obvious, Flake’s pre-vote soul-searching is the fake-out and his vote is the kennel.

  • UN Report Accuses Assad of War Crimes

    Fox News has reported that a United Nations commission has accused the Assad regime and affiliated militias of war crimes.  A mountain of evidence is claimed as the basis for these accusations, but sources are not provided.
    “The 24-page document by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic focuses on happenings inside Syria between January and July of this year. It is based on hundreds of interviews, satellite images, videos, medical records and government communications during that time period, among other sources.”
    All of the incidents are said to have happened between January and July of this year, including an alleged chlorine payload delivered by helicopter on April 7.  Strangely, the report also cites the presence of Syrian government forces on the edge of Idlib and acknowledges it is in preparation for an offensive on the last major terrorist stronghold in Syria. It doesn’t mention that  the Syrians and Russians informed the United States of their  plans and warned its personnel to get out of the area.  The U.S. responded by sending in 500 additional troops. The article ends with the standard warning to the Syrians about using chemical weapons.
    The White House warned Assad last week that if he chooses to use chemical weapons in the offensive against Idlib, the U.S. and its allies “will respond swiftly and appropriately.”
    It is common knowledge that the Syrian government has no chemical weapons.  If the United States and its allies attack the Syrians, they will be committing a criminal act.
error: Content is protected !!