Jeffrey Feldman's "Frameshop" Blog Is Definitely Worth a Look

I just discovered Jeffrey Feldman's Frameshop blog. It is an excellent discussion of how the Right uses rhetoric to "frame" our political debate.

Here's an Easy and Rewarding Way to Help the Environment

I recently heard about a free service that will stop catalogs from coming in the mail to your home thus saving the mail person the trouble of carrying them, you the trouble of throwing them away, and trees that combat global warming from being cut down. Go to catalogchoice.org and sign up. They also have information about the values of doing so.

Another Good Book

I've just finished reading Italian political thinker Norbert Bobbio's Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. Since Bobbio is a serious political philosopher the book starts slowly with many distinctions that may seem academic. Start on p. 38 for the good stuff. An excellent book by a careful thinker.

Morris R. Cohen and a Basic Element of Liberalism

In 1946 Morris R. Cohen, philosopher, lawyer and legal scholar, published a collection of essays under the title “The Faith of a Liberal”. The first essay in the book was written in 1931 and entitled “What I believe”. This essay captures an essential element of liberalism that provides a marked contrast with much of what has passed as 'conservatism' in the U.S. since World War II. Cohen wrote:

The central fact to which... prevailing creeds refuse to accord sufficiently serious attention is the obvious impossibility of attaining omniscience…. [S]imple honesty requires us to admit that none of our creeds are entirely free of guesswork. This lack of omniscience is not cured by reliance on faith, intuition, or authority. For however certain we may feel, we never know that such faith, intuition, or authority will not in the end prove itself mistaken….

To the inadequacy of our knowledge must be added the tremendous force of temporarily pleasant illusions, compared with which the love of truth is pitifully frail…. The sources of illusion are many: inherited forms of expression, fashions in respectable or approved opinions, the idols of our tribe or clique, of the market place, of our professional conventions, and the like….

[G]reat religious teachers, like the morally wise men of science, have taught the great lesson of humility—that there are always vast realms beyond our ken or control….

The realization of the pathetic frailty of the knowledge or beliefs on which our life depends... leads not to despair but to open-eyed courage. But it also points to a most intimate connection between scientific method and liberal civilization…. [Science] is rather a method which is based on a critical attitude to all plausible and self-evident propositions. It seeks not to reject them, but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives, each to receive the same logical treatment before we can determine which is the best grounded, is the essence of liberalism in art, morals, and politics. Conservatism clings to what is established, fearing that if we let go, all the values of life will perish. The radical or revolutionary, impressed with the evil of the existing order or disorder, recklessly puts all faith in some principle without regard for the hidden dangers which it may contain, let alone the cruel hardships which readjustments must involve. The liberal views life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, but in which there is no guaranty that the new will always be the good or the true. Like science, liberalism insists on a critical examination of the content of our beliefs, principles, or initial hypotheses and on subjecting them to a continuous process of verification so that they will be better founded in experience and reason…. [Emphasis added.]

Unless men reason they remain sunk in blind dogmatism, clinging obstinately to questionable beliefs without the consciousness that these may be mere prejudices. “To have doubted one’s own first principles,” said Justice Holmes, “is the mark of a civilized man.” And to refuse to do so, we may add, is the essence of fanaticism.

The fanatic clings to certain beliefs and in their defense is ready to shut the gates of mercy on mankind, precisely because he cannot see any alternative to them except utter chaos or iniquity. Rational reflection, however, makes us see other possibilities and opens our minds to the thought that some of the moral or physical principles that seem to us self-evident may be only sanctified taboos or inherited conventions.

To reflect that in the absence of omniscience all our principles of morality and conduct are but hypotheses need not prevent us from staking our lives on these anticipations of experience and from fighting as valiantly as we can for what we hold dearest…. Civil society depends not on blindness or insensibility to the loathsome traits of our fellow-mortals, but upon respecting their rights without taking them to our bosoms. This can be achieved only through sympathetic understanding. Co-operation with those from whom we differ is possible only if we rationalize our beliefs and thus make them intelligible to those from differing backgrounds.

This is why genuine liberals cannot be pseudo-conservatives or authoritarians. I think it's a great statement to which I subscribe.

'Conservatism' as Unprincipled Opportunism

I am currently reading John W. Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience. Let me reveal some of my own mistaken biases: since I'm old enough to have been aware and politically active in the Watergate era I thought, "Oh John Dean, that Blind Ambition guy who was in Nixon's White House; he's just an ex-politico, what can he know?" Well, I was wrong. John W. Dean is an excellent researcher and thinker and Conservatives Without Conscience covered a lot of the ground I've been writing about myself. This guy Dean is a very serious thinker. (Why he's just got to be smart if he's writing about what I'm writing about!) I highly recommend his books.

But let me here develop an idea that he only hints at in his book. He writes at length about how so-called conservatives themselves so very frequently argue that there is no way to define 'conservatism'; they go so far as to revel in this supposed fact and celebrate their right to contradict themselves. Of course it IS difficult to give a definition of a belief system like conservatism or liberalism, there is no question about that; but when you get so MANY so-called conservatives opining that they cannot define their own belief system (see Dean, 2006, pp. 2-10) you should really begin to think about this.

It is hugely convenient for so-called conservatives to take this position. If you trumpet the fact that you cannot define what you stand for and you make an asset out of being able to take contradictory positions--what are the consequences of this stance? It allows you to be unprincipled and opportunistic in your pursuit of a coalition of followers as well as in your pursuit of political power. And it is precisely this that has occurred since Buckley and his colleagues created modern American 'conservatism' in the post World War II era. I have commented upon this earlier calling it the "witch's brew" of pseudo-conservatives (if you wish to see these search in my blog under "witch's"). So-called conservatives have been given a huge pass here by allowing them to mix the most contradictory elements and yet get away with giving the whole mess a single label.

They are for "limited government" but they support the Reagan-Bush-Cheney theory of the unitary executive! (On this see Charlie Savage's Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy; Savage won a Pulitzer for his articles about signing statements and is a very thoughtful, careful fellow.) They revere the great American Constitution but support the dismantling of its checks and balances. They are defenders of "individual freedom" but will rush back to Washington to pass special legislation telling Terry Schiavo's relatives how to manage her feeding tube. They support a "culture of life" but, unlike the Catholic Church which also opposes abortion, they are big supporters of the death penalty. They are the champions of small government but never met a defense department or national security budget increase they didn't like. They support bringing "freedom and democracy" to the rest of the world, just not where it is inconvenient as in the case of the democratically elected Hamas government. They are most emphatically Christians but seem to have 'forgotten' Christ's teachings about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and sheltering those without shelter. They revere the Ten Commandments including the sixth, "Thou Shalt not Kill", except when it comes to Pat Robertson calling for "taking out" Hugo Chavez. They are absolutely against government interference in the economy except when it comes to passing legislation which weakens labor unions.

They are indeed a mass of blatant contradictions which truly reduces itself to an unprincipled, opportunistic grasping for popular and political power. And their strategy has been remarkably successful in America, especially since Reagan.

More Important Findings about Authoritarianism and Who Rules America

I have ordered but not yet received John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience. This is an important book because while researching it Dean went through the social science literature and discovered Bob Altemeyer's 40 year body of work on authoritarianism. He integrated these social science findings into his book and brought renewed and much deserved attention to Altemeyer's work. As a psychologist myself I have heard often of how we are supposed to be involved in a longer term program of research in order to make a significant scientific contribution but this admonition is usually more observed in the breach than it is followed. Altemeyer is the model of long term programmatic research! He has been at it for 40 years and has accumulated a wealth of findings.

Altemeyer has researched mainly authoritarian followers or what he calls people who score high on his Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale. In the 1990s a Swedish psychologist Jim Sidanius developed a measure of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). He has mainly reported on this in professional journals but has published a book as well called Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Persons high on SDO want to dominate others socially and are against increased equality. Research has shown that persons who score high on RWA and others who score high on SDO are each relatively highly prejudiced against minorities.

Since the RWA scale and the SDO scale do not correlate very highly with one another they explain different sources of prejudice. Altemeyer wondered how many persons might get both high RWA score and high SDO scores and it turns out that about 8% of his sample are "Double Highs", this minority scores highly on both right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance. Both Altemeyer and John Dean have drawn attention to these Double Highs as persons who might rise to leadership in the American Right. I suspect Dean identifies Dick Cheney as a double high.

RWAs believe in submission to their perceived authorities, are dogmatic followers of the conventions endorsed by these authorities, and are more willing to advocate and commit aggression to suppress dissidents and deviants. SDOs, on the other hand, are less ideological and they seek power in a more cynical fashion. Double Highs can appeal to the RWA followers for support because they hold enough of their views and are willing to do what is necessary to achieve socio-political power. So Double Highs would likely include George W. Bush who flaunts his born again Christian credentials to gain votes and, with the help of the ultimate Machiavellian, Karl Rove, is frequently willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat his opponents and gain political power.

Must Read: "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy"

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have just published the book which follows up their 2006 article by the same name which stirred a firestorm. This is a very carefully and thoughtfully reasoned book by two academic political scientists. It gives a wealth of information about how much money and support we have given Israel beginning in the 1960s; this aid is frequently in the form of grants they don't have to pay back and we give it to them no matter what they do with it. The authors make the argument that this unconditional support is contrary to US interests and those of Israel. If this seems difficult to believe please recall that governments have been horribly wrong in the past regarding their own best interests, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan doesn't look too smart now does it? How about Hitler's attempt to rule the world? Japan's decision to attack the US?

Read Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers".

An economically expanding power… may well prefer to become rich rather than to spend heavily on armaments. A half-century later, priorities may well have altered. The earlier economic expansion has brought with it overseas obligations (dependence upon foreign markets and raw materials, military alliances, perhaps bases and colonies)…. In these more troubled circumstances, the Great Power is likely to find itself spending much more on defense than it did two generations earlier, and yet still discover that the world is a less secure environment—simply because other powers have grown faster, and are becoming stronger…. Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma (emphasis added).

I believe, along with Chalmers Johnson (see his Nemesis), that this is the position the U.S. is now in; it is on the downslope of over-reaching militarily which will eventually hurt it economically and seriously undermine its world power.