Why "Conservatives" Can't Do Foreign Policy

Call Them "Radical Right", NOT "Conservative"

2008-07-18T06:27:00.003-05:00

Most of the posts I have written here address the issues of why most of the people chronically labeled "conservative" by our main stream and corporate-owned media are utterly mislabeled by this term. I have suggested that they are more appropriately labeled "pseudo-conservative" following the original use of that term in the classic book "The Authoritarian Personality" and in Richard Hofstadter's writings from the 1950s and 1960s. However, there is another term that comes from the 1960s that is also a more accurate label for many on the American right and that is "Radical Right". I recommend that these two terms can be used largely interchangeably and that just as the Radical Right has used its powers of redefinition to turn the term "liberal" into practically a dirty word and refused even to honor the long chosen and essentially accurate name of "Democratic" Party, insisting on calling it the "Democrat" party, those of us on the libertarian left and right should stop unconsciously parroting right-wing propaganda by continuing to mislabel the pseudo-conservative radical right as "conservative".

Read Glenn Greenwald's "Great American Hypocrites"

2008-07-14T08:17:00.003-05:00

Glenn Greenwald's new book "Great American Hypocrites" very effectively argues a number of the kinds of things I have proposed in earlier posts to this blog. While he is primarily focused on the Republican Party's hypocrisy this underlines how those who claim to be "conservative" are not. Here is how he puts it on p. 237:

There has been a long line of decidedly unconservative actions by the Bush administration that have been almost uniformly cheered on by the right wing--from exploding discretionary domestic spending to record deficits, to an emergency convening of the federal government to intervene in one woman's end-of-life decisions, to attempts to federalize marriage and medical laws--all of which could not be any more alien to what has been meant by conservatism for the past forty years.

Greenwald is very effective in providing evidence of how Republican ideologues are, in their actions and lives, precisely the opposite of what they say they are. Read Greenwald's book and let us put a stop to the mammoth hypocrisy they have been getting away with for at least the last 28 years. As he puts it on p. 2:

those who playact as powerful Tough Guys and anti-terrorist Warriors and Crusaders for the Values Voters have lives filled with weakness, fear, unbridled hedonism, unearned privilege, sheltered insulation, and none of the "Traditional Masculine Virtues" they endlessly tout.

In his Chapter 1 he shows how that model of Republican Tough and Patriotic American, John Wayne, actually lived his life. In Chapter 2 he describes how the establishment media enables Republican hypocrites to get away with their hypocrisy. Chapter 3 deals with the more general tendency of Republican males to swagger around pretending to be tough guys in their "Tough Guise" while in fact being the opposite. Chapter 4 concerns Republican shamming of being morally superior examples of family values.

Chapter Five examines what has perhaps become the most transparent Republican myth of all: that it is the party of small government, limited federal power, and individual liberty.

In his final chapter Greenwald focuses upon John McCain's hypocrisies. This is an excellent book.

New and Not Improved: Barack Obama

2008-07-05T11:20:00.004-05:00

Here is a New York Times editorial noting that Barack Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics. Yet now there seems to be a new Mr. Obama on the hustings. Unlike the radical right which believes that the New York Times is the "liberal" anti-Christ, I see the N Y Times is an essentially center-right paper most frequently found in the "patriotic" cheering section for most "tough" stands; thus, when Obama gets in trouble with the N Y Times editorial page that should be a sign he must be doing something wrong. The editorial cites Obama's change on FISA noting that he previously committed to supporting a filibuster against any law granting retroactive immunity. For some of the very best analysis of Obama's misleading statements about why he will now vote for the FISA "compromise you MUST read Glenn Greenwald's magnificently knowledgeable and carefully reasoned posts. There were several excellent posts before this one but Update III of the above post criticizes Obama's latest statement with a point by point analysis.

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A Big Obama Test: If Israel Attacks Iran

2008-06-20T09:04:00.003-05:00

I have been a relatively enthusiastic backer of Barack Obama. There was news this morning that Israel carried out a military exercise that was a practice for bombing Iran. I was extremely disappointed to see Obama pander to AIPAC in a recent speech where he gratuitously promised that Jerusalem would remain the Israeli capital and must remain undivided. If Israel were to bomb Iran this would be a huge test for Obama's strength of character: if he were to support such an illegal, aggressive and unjustified attack he would go down in my estimation very considerably. This would constitute a "Profile in Pandering" rather than a profile in courage. Moreover, this would put Obama in the war camp very close to George W. Bush and would be an indicator that he is not so much the "change" candidate he would like us to believe he is.

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

2008-04-19T17:31:00.003-05:00

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

2008-01-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-03T22:23:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-18T16:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-06T07:24:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-04T13:44:00.000-05:00

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"

2007-08-30T17:09:00.000-05:00

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.

Be Sure to read "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer

2007-08-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

I have just finished "The Authoritarians" a free online book written by Bob Altemeyer who has been researching this topic for 40 years. Apparently he is close to retirement and this book gives a summary of the many studies he has run over 40 years. This is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the American Radical Right today and why the term "pseudo-conservative" was first prominently used in a book called "The Authoritarian Personality" almost 60 years ago. Altemeyer also distinguishes 'conservatism' from 'authoritarianism' and I believe that authoritarianism is in large part what I refer to as pseudo-conservatism. It is important to understand that Altemeyer is reporting what he has found with scientific studies conducted over four decades and not, like me, just presenting opinions based on my own reading and thinking. I heartily recommend this book!

Still Trying to Distinguish Authoritarianism from Genuine Conservatism

2007-08-22T10:23:00.000-05:00

Reflections on Authoritarianism

How should we define authoritarianism? Reading both Stenner (2005) and Altemeyer’s online book, “The Authoritarians” (2007), I have some thoughts. Let us first look at how Altemeyer defined authoritarianism. On page 9 he defined authoritarians as: “personalities featuring: 1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and 3) a high level of conventionalism.”

I think there are good reasons to question Altemeyer’s use of “established, legitimate authorities” as a reference group upon which to base his most fundamental definition. And he himself provided examples of such reasons. On p.16 he wrote: “right-wing authoritarians did not support President Clinton during his impeachment and trial over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. So as I said, the support is not automatic and reflexive, but can be trumped by other concerns. In Clinton’s case his administration not only had advocated for groups anathema to authoritarians, such as homosexuals and feminists, his sexual misdeeds in the White House deeply offended many [authoritarians].”

But Bill Clinton was the duly elected President of the United States and thus he met every criterion of an established, legitimate authority. If authoritarians did not support an elected President then the definition of their group as exhibiting “a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society” is not accurate. Altemeyer (p. 15) had already pointed out: “We would expect authoritarian followers especially to submit to corrupt authorities in their lives: to believe them when there is little reason to do so, to trust them when huge grounds for suspicion exist, and to hold them blameless when they do something wrong.” Moreover, on p. 16 he showed that authoritarians supported Presidents Nixon and George W. Bush when their integrity had been challenged; why not Bill Clinton, an at least equally established, legitimate authority?

Altemeyer (p. 9) also referred to “traditional religious leaders” as examples of the kind of “established authorities” that “authoritarian followers usually support”. But authoritarians certainly discriminate between religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, whom they usually support, and more liberal religious leaders whom they emphatically do not support, e.g., the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another example occurred to me in relation to another study Altemeyer reported on (p. 28): “Gidi Rubinstein similarly found that [authoritarians] among both Jewish and Palestinian students in Israel tended to be the most orthodox members of their religion, who tend to be among those most resistant to a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict. If their authorities endorse hostility, you can bet most authoritarian followers will be combative.” But consider that Yitzhak Rabin was the duly elected Prime Minister of Israel, an established, legitimate authority, when he was assassinated by an ‘orthodox’ right-wing Israeli radical who opposed Rabin’s peace efforts. Rabin was obviously not the assassin’s authority even though he was ‘established’ and ‘legitimate’. Can it be merely a coincidence that Rabin and Bill Clinton were so close?

Throughout Chapter 1 of “The Authoritarians” Altemeyer repeatedly uses phrases like “their authorities” or “their in-groups” to refer to the groups to whom authoritarians give their allegiance. For example (p. 29) he wrote: “They are quite capable of adhering to the beliefs emphasized by their in-groups when these conflict with what is held by society as a whole.” (emphasis added) This seems to me an implicit admission that authoritarians have their own ‘authorities’ and ‘in-groups’ and do not give their allegiance to any and all “established, legitimate authorities”.

In thinking about this it has seemed to me that authoritarians will only glorify and submit to certain specific types of established authority, ‘authoritarian authorities’. However, this sort of formulation begs the question of defining “authoritarian”, which was the problem we set out to solve initially.

Stenner’s “authoritarian dynamic” involves the idea that when individuals with “authoritarian predispositions” are challenged by “normative threat” they will become more sharply authoritarian in thought and behavior (as well measured by Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale or RWA). She defined (p. 15) authoritarian predisposition in terms of “attitudes and behaviors variously reflecting rejection of diversity and insistence upon sameness…. The predisposition is labeled ‘authoritarianism’ because suppression of difference and achievement of uniformity necessitate autocratic social arrangements in which individual autonomy yields to group authority.”

Having “normative threat” as a very central concept she is required to consider what kind of “normative order” authoritarians would need to protect. Stenner wrote (p. 18) that she wished to distinguish authoritarians from “conservatives” by defining the latter as those who are committed to preserving a specific normative order, e.g., American Constitutionalism. She argued that although authoritarians would begin by defending the status quo and thus be hard to distinguish from mere conservatives, true authoritarians are primarily interested in maintaining uniformity and sameness in ethnic composition, political beliefs and moral values—and thus they would ultimately be willing to sacrifice any existing status quo (e.g., Weimar constitutional democracy) in favor of a new normative order that would guarantee uniformity and sameness. This then requires her to describe what type of normative order this would be.

Stenner wrote (pp. 18-9): “This is not to say, of course, that the ‘normative order’ of authoritarianism is completely interchangeable, that its content is entirely fungible, that oneness and sameness could be instituted and defended by collective commitment (voluntary or otherwise) to any set of values, norms, and beliefs. Oneness and sameness are attributes of the collective rather than the individual, and they are end states, not processes. They cannot be achieved without some type of coercive control over other people’s behavior…. If individuals are free, collective outcomes will vary, and oneness and sameness cannot be assured…. Thus, while the content of authoritarianism’s ‘normative order’ is somewhat flexible with regard to the specification of right and wrong… it is by no means value neutral. The normative order whose institution and defense might render ‘us’ one and the same can never value individual autonomy and diversity, and will always tend toward some kind of system of collective authority and constraint.”(final emphasis added)

Perhaps it is now somewhat clearer why I have been tempted to talk of ‘authoritarian authorities’. Altemeyer’s contention that authoritarians are characterized by “a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society” is not accurate. The only ‘established’ authorities that authoritarians glorify and defend are those who endorse a strict obedience to some form of coercive normative order that satisfies the needs of authoritarian followers. This could be Islamic fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism, it could be Mussolini’s fascist philosophy or Hitler’s Nazi philosophy, it could be some form of coercive Marxism-Leninism or ‘democratic centralism—but, as Stenner argued: “The normative order whose institution and defense might render ‘us’ one and the same can never value individual autonomy and diversity, and will always tend toward some kind of system of collective authority and constraint.”

This may help to differentiate genuine conservatives like Bruce Fein and his call for impeachment of Bush and Cheney because of his profound commitment to the Constitution, from authoritarians like Bush and Cheney. To the degree that a conservative is committed to a particular normative order and advocates only slow and prudent changes to that order, like Edmund Burke, they qualify as genuine conservatives.

The category of so-called ‘laissez faire conservative’, which Stenner discussed (p. 86 and see her Index), as did Rossiter (1962, pp. 131-62) is, I believe, close to a contradiction in terms and I will deal with that at more length later. The only way I can see to save this concept is by arguing that American society as it has been constituted for a long time is committed to a type of ‘laissez faire’ philosophy and thus a conservative in the specifically American context might be an advocate of laissez faire. Nonetheless, the recognition that capitalism is itself sometimes a revolutionary force, as in the only true social revolution in American history, the industrial revolution—suggests why I think a philosophy that advocates giving free rein to capitalism and keeping government from regulating the economy cannot easily be called ‘conservative.’ And this is without dealing with the enormous revolutionary changes in American society worked by the corporate revolution, which should be kept conceptually distinct from the industrial revolution. If U.S. state governments and the courts had not awarded corporations such immense powers we would have surely had an industrial revolution but not necessarily a corporate revolution as well.

American Proto-Fascism?

2007-08-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've posted on what I see as gathering evidence of precursors of American fascism and have also recommended Robert O. Paxton's very excellent book, The Anatomy of Fascism. Here is another example which you can see for yourself on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" TV program. To see a video go here and look for the August 17 "Worst Person in the World" segment which can be played online.

Melanie Morgan is a right-wing extremist commentator who recently has several times viciously attacked Jon Soltz of votevets.org because, although he is a veteran of the Iran War, he has been publicly critical of the Bush administration and the war.

Here's what patriot Melanie Morgan had to say about him: "[Soltz is a] hypocritical cockroach. He needs to be stomped on and neutralized...."

Hmmm. In case you missed the rise of the Nazis before WW II and haven't read Richard Evans' book "The Coming of the Third Reich", perhaps you'll get a replay in the not too distant future of the US. I guess Supporting Our Troops stops once they become critics of US government policy. Freedom of Speech on political issues is one of the most fundamental values on which America was supposed to have been based; I find it remarkable that these patriotic Americans don't see any contradiction between their support for America and their concurrent violation of its most basic principles.

Why do I call this proto-fascist? This is precisely the kind of hate speech that Nazis used against their political enemies. Morgan doesn't say who should carry out the "stomping" and "neutralizing" but the Nazis had the Brownshirts as an organization that carried out extra-legal political violence against its enemies. If we see the formation of extra-legal groups prepared to carry out political violence then that would constitute one more step toward full-blown fascism.

Barbara O'Brien's Mahablog Has Interesting Posts on Pseudo-Conservatives

2007-08-17T10:21:00.000-05:00

I want to direct people to a series of very interesting posts by Barbara O'Brien's The Mahablog concerning the whole topic of pseudo-conservatives and authoritarianism. You can start with today's post or search her blog under relevant terms. This whole topic of pseudo-conservatives being best understood as authoritarians is central, I believe.

My Struggles to Understand the Appeal of 'Tough' Foreign Policy

2007-08-16T16:39:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I struggled mightily to understand the appeal of 'tough' foreign policy. I now think that this thinking makes so little sense to me because I can't empathize enough with the authoritarian personality. This notion of 'tough' punitive treatment of our opponents comes right out of the authoritarian's psychological playbook. See my previous posts involving Karen Stenner's The Authoritarian Dynamic. Search for these by using the Search tool in the upper left of my blog's homepage and type in Stenner.

Why Authoritarians Have a Fundamental Advantage

2007-08-16T14:36:00.000-05:00

I have been reading an interesting book, Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea, by linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff. This is a good book with many good ideas. One of his most fundamental ideas is that 'progressives' have a very different concept of 'freedom' than right-wing 'conservatives'. He believes these different concepts of 'freedom' are based upon differing conceptions of the family: 'progressives' are committed to a "nurturant parent" family model and 'conservatives' are committed to a "strict father" family model. This is a reasonable attempt to organize the fundamental differences between so-called 'conservatives' and 'progressives' or liberals. This task is one that needs to be done: how do we understand and organize the fundamental differences between 'conservatives' and 'liberals'?

While reading Lakoff it occurred to me that Karen Stenner's book "The Authoritarian Dynamic" might really have more to say about these differences (see my several earlier posts on Stenner's book beginning with this) than Lakoff. Lakoff simply posits that different people have different conceptions of the family while not going deeper to ask why. Stenner argued that there are perhaps 30% of people who are born with a biological disposition to be authoritarian. I wrote:

In an excellent book, The Authoritarian Dynamic, political scientist Karen Stenner gave a brief description of the predisposition to be authoritarian; she wrote (p. 16) that the stances taken by the authoritarian “have the effect of glorifying, encouraging, and rewarding uniformity and of disparaging, suppressing, and punishing difference.” Ad hominem attacks are attempts to glorify uniformity and suppress difference. On the other end of the continuum from authoritarianism is libertarianism.

I frankly think it is at least plausible that approximately 30% of humans are born with a biological predisposition to be authoritarian and that this means they feel compelled to glorify, encourage, and reward uniformity and disparage, suppress and punish difference. It is these people who would naturally be drawn to Lakoff's "stern father" model of the family.

The fact that authoritarians glorify uniformity and punish difference gives them a fundamental political advantage: their stress on uniformity and rejection of difference allows them to share a reasonably common set of beliefs that give them solidarity. Liberals, on the other hand, stand for a diversity of beliefs and the right to disagree and be different. This puts them at a fundamental disadvantage to authoritarians! Look at Hitler's emphasis upon the necessity that members of the Nazi Party declare absolute allegiance to his 25 points (see Richard Evans, "The Coming of the Third Reich", pp. 179-180). As Evans points out these 25 points were "soon declared 'unalterable', so as to prevent it from becoming a focus for internal dissension." Although I haven't got a ready citation for this think of Lenin's emphasis upon the need for "democratic centralism" in the Bolshevik Party so that once a position or strategy had been agreed to all discussion and criticism must stop. Totalitarianism has this fundamental advantage over liberals and progressives because the latter prize diversity and believe that free discussion will eventually bring one to the truth.

In fact it seems to me that a very basic belief of liberalism is that humans are not in possession of the truth and thus using tools like free public discussion, or the scientific method, or continued search for innovation in technology and industry are at the very heart of liberalism. On the other hand, the authoritarian believes we know the truth (the Bible is the unerrant word of God, America is always right and thus you must love it or leave it, questioning the government in wartime is tantamount to treason, etc.) and thus diversity and differences are simply annoying discomforts that should be punished and suppressed. The uniformity, discipline and subordination to a leader (father) gives authoritarians a very strong advantage over liberals and this is at least worth being aware of.

Further Comments on Recent Posts

2007-08-16T13:52:00.000-05:00

Let me respond to some of Steven Andresen's points here:

I am under the impression that political writers have been trying to point out the fascistic characteristics of the conservative movement for a long time. They've done it so much I hear the argument that they are like the boy who cried wolf.

Calling some group 'fascist' is indeed a well worn tactic but to me it makes a difference whether you are just throwing names around or taking seriously what the words mean. Thus, I cite Paxton who is a very serious and thoughtful student of fascism and use his carefully arrived at definition to determine if the label is justified or not.

I believe there are differences between the neo-cons and the christian zionists, for example.

I agree. The neo-cons are primarily Zionists (not all but most are) whose main concerns are a 'tough' foreign policy and US support for the hard right within Israel. The Christian Zionists are Christian fundamentalist evangelicals who believe that Israel must be supported because of their reading of the bible even though they often have the belief that Jews will ultimately go to Hell.

Do we want to argue that the kooks are beyond the pale and no one should be paying any attention to them?

I think they are part of what used to be called the 'lunatic fringe' but now the fringe has substantial power. I wish we could ignore them but as you say we can't do that if we wish to live in the real world of practical politics.

Are we wanting to question the reasoning behind the kook movements? That would be interesting. But, I'm not sure anybody has the will to follow through with any critique of their foundations.

We have to learn to be just as persistent as they are in putting forward our analysis and showing what is wrong with theirs. Drew Westen's recent book "The Political Brain" argues very convincingly how we must oppose the extremist right. Bill Clinton and Howard Dean strongly recommend this book.

I'm sure this was the argument the nazi party guys made to each other and to the German people. They said, you cannot deny the threat to our morality posed by the communists or the jews.

You are exactly right, Hitler and the Nazis emphasized the threat to the Fatherland of Communists, Socialists, Jews and homosexuals. I'd say the real threat to the US is the foreign policies we have pursued that have caused Muslims to want to fight and destroy us; similar to what Ron Paul argued at one of the recent Republican debates. Ron Paul is a Libertarian who believes we ought to leave other countries alone unless they truly pose a threat to us.

That is, the puzzle isn't so much about how all these people are different amongst themselves, but how we can know who to listen to for guidance about what to do?

I have indicated throughout this blog many of the people I think it makes sense to listen to and who have good ideas about what we can do.

Answer to a Question About 'Conservatism'

2007-08-16T09:57:00.000-05:00

Steven Andresen recently asked a question about how to define 'conservatism' as a comment to my Why Pseudo-Conservatives Are Not 'Conservative' post and since my reply is longish I thought I'd add it as a new post.

I believe the term 'conservative' has been hijacked by right-wing extremists in the US and thus tends to mean what ever they want it to mean even if what they believe contradicts the dictionary definition of 'conservative' and even if the principles they say they espouse are self-contradictory. Could I direct your attention to the four part series of posts I wrote called "What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?" that starts here?

So-called "Christian Conservatives" are usually right-wing extremists who come closer to qualifying as fascists than anything 'conservative'. I do not use the term 'fascist' lightly. Robert Paxton recently published a really excellent book called "The Anatomy of Fascism" which very carefully examines the appropriate uses of this term. Paxton is a historian at Columbia and has spent many years teaching, writing and thinking about fascism. Here's his definition (p. 218):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in an uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of
internal cleansing and external expansion.

While we have not yet realized a state of full-fledged fascism in the US Paxton demonstrates that movements can approximate fascism and there can be precursors. I suggest that the Christian right's preoccupation with 'moral decline' in America, it's preoccupation with seeing itself as the butt of a war on Christianity (let me know if you want an example), it's culture war against liberals, it's development of a compensatory cult of 'purity', it's mass-based militant nationalism ("America: Love It or Leave It"), it's collaboration with the traditional elites of the Republican Party and many in the corporate and military elites, the gradual but constant abandonment of democratic liberties under the Bush administration, the redemptive violence against abortion doctors and clinics, the goal of internally cleansing "secular humanists" and an external expansion that apparently knows no bounds (see Chalmers Johnson's "The Sorrows of Empire" and "Nemesis"--all of these elements are precursors of American fascism.

Sinclair Lewis is reputed to have said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." I suspect this came pretty close to being an accurate anticipation and if Lewis said it his statement was made in the 1930s.

On the Origins of the Cold War

2007-05-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

I've been reading a number of books on the origins of the Cold War because I really believe that it was the post-WW II period that set us on the path we're on today: militarism, empire, and lessening democracy and devotion to the Constitution at home. For a truly excellent description of "the path we're on today" read Chalmers Johnson's new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. This is a book many will find difficult to take seriously but I find it very convincing; and Johnson is no knee-jerk radical, he worked as a consultant for the CIA for a number of years and has been a respected academic for many years.

At any rate I've been reading John Lewis Gaddis' The United States and the Origins of the Cold War. Gaddis is considered the primary 'respectable' authority on the Cold War and indeed his book is very well written and researched (I'm reading the original 1971 edition.). Gaddis began with a Preface in which he explained that he was going to look at foreign policy through the eyes of those who made it. What he failed to say was that this principle applied primarily to American policymakers and not their Soviet counterparts. One of the things this means is that America's commitment to "self-determination" for all peoples, as announced by FDR and Churchill in the Atlantic Charter of pre-Pearl Harbor 1941, is taken at pretty much face value. This is important because when the Soviet Union's armies, which fought the Nazis with little manpower help from England or the US for about three years and lost 16-20 million in doing so, wanted its own sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (through which it had been attacked three times within 130 years), the U.S. found it necessary to stand for the "self-determination" of Eastern European countries.

Gaddis finds it difficult to fully acknowledge that most of our talk about "self-determination" was disingenuous propaganda because acceding to Churchill we excluded most of the British Empire from self-determination and in our own history had amply demonstrated our hypocrisy re "self-determination". For evidence of the latter think of Cuba, the Phillipines and Puerto Rico in 1898, Cuba in 1960-1, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, French Indochina (Vietnam) in the 1954-1974 period, Chile in 1973, etc. etc. etc. (Read Stephen Kinzer's book, Overthrow.) My belief is that historians ought to attempt to be as objective as possible but most of the American history I read is "patriotic" history.

William Kristol's Revealing Slip of the Tongue, Transcript

2007-04-26T06:28:00.000-05:00

See my prior post for more explanation. Kristol is being interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR's "All Things Considered" about John McCain's current candidacy and asks Kristol what McCain's advantages are over other candidates. In part of his reply Kristol states:

"... but ultimately this is going to be a wartime election [2008], this is the first post-9/11 primary among Republicans, 2004 was a post-9/11 election but obviously Bush wasn't challenged, and I do think it will be a foreign policy election--that will be McCain's claim, that he can lead this country through the wars or through the difficult challenges [embarrassed chuckle as he says the word "challenges" correcting his slip "wars"] that we face."

That this warmonger-ideologue is still being so frequently interviewed on radio and TV unfortunately demonstrates that pseudo-conservatives have NOT been so embarrassed by their patently horrendous advice leading us into the Iraq War that they are discredited; one wonders: 'what will it take?'

What You Can't Make a Profit At

2007-04-26T04:56:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking lately of what would be on the list of things that are essential but which you can't make a profit at (or enough of a profit). Last night on Bill Moyers Journal (first show of a new series) mention was made of how 'expensive' it is to hire the personnel necessary to research and report real factual news stories as opposed to how cheap it is to hire pundit 'experts' who merely sit and pontificate about their opinions. As a result more and more newspapers, 'news' magazines like "Time", and news bureaus for TV are getting rid of their news reporters/researchers and hiring more 'experts' to give opinions. Fewer facts and more opinions: the 'modern' fourth estate. The free press that is so essential to democracy.

I recall a fellow who had just finished yet another book on our health insurance 'crisis' who pointed out how it just wasn't profitable to provide care for people with serious chronic illnesses. Since we are such a 'Christian' society I guess Jesus would have preached that those people with chronic illnesses would just have to fend for themselves. (The Gospel according to capitalism.)

Being responsible for cleaning up one's own environmental pollution is apparently not profitable either.

I've heard discussions of medications in which it was revealed that certain drugs are just not profitable enough, thus drug companies don't research improvements in those regardless of how efficacious they would be for health. I guess Jefferson should have written:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, if said rights can be profitably pursued. — That to secure these rights, Corporations are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Board of Directors.

William Kristol's Revealing Slip of the Tongue

2007-04-25T15:49:00.000-05:00

In my car about a half hour ago I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. Robert Siegel was doing a piece on John McCain since McCain officially announced his candidacy today. The second part of the piece was an interview with pseudo-conservative William Kristol who is a McCain admirer. During this interview Kristol said something to the effect that we need a wartime president and then followed this with the remark that such a president would be necessary to fight the "wars" we would be involved in. After he said "wars" he gave an embarassed laugh and corrected himself to say "war". The transcript and the audio will be available by tomorrow at which time I will listen again and transcribe exactly what he said. Kristol is a rabid hawk and knee-jerk supporter of the Israeli far right and if he has anything to say about it we will have more "wars". Recall my previous post on Kristol during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last year. There I wrote:

Claiming that Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran but with its own extensive political and social base among the 40% Shia population in Lebanon, is identical with Iran, Kristol suggested that either the United States or Israel “consider countering this act of Iranian (sic) aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? ... Yes, there would be repercussions—and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.”

One of the healthiest things I've heard in a while was the comment by some pundit on TV recently that many Americans are concerned that the Republican Party is too warlike. I certainly hope this is true because the Republican Right would be only too likely to get us into more wars if they listen to Israel Lobbyists and war cheerleaders such as William Kristol. This is the same Kristol who told NPR audiences prior to the Iraq invasion that the idea that the Sunnis and Shia would get into sectarian conflict was "pop sociology".

Support Norman Finkelstein for Tenure at DePaul

2007-04-24T15:10:00.000-05:00

If you go to Norman Finkelstein's website you will find articles from the New York Times and The Independent about how Alan Dershowitz is trying to get Finkelstein's tenure turned down; although it has been OK'd by his Department and College there is a Dean who is giving in to outside pressure and saying Finkelstein should not get tenure. Finkelstein's crime is that he has been a very effective critic of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians (even though both his parents were in Nazi concentration camps). I have read two of Finkelstein's books and he is a very effective scholarly researcher who has received the admiration of very respected scholars in the fields about which he writes. His 'fault' has been that he is willing to attack scholarship that he thinks is wrong and he takes controversial positions. (God forbid anyone might take controversial positions in American academia.) Dershowitz tried to stop University of California Press from publishing his book "Beyond Chutzpah" and now he is trying to stop Finkelstein from getting tenure.

Now Here's a True "Must Read"!

2007-04-10T09:43:00.000-05:00

I am just beginning a very unusual book, When Corporations Rule the World, By David C. Korten. Both the author and his writing style are very unusual. The author is a 70 year old with an MBA and Ph.D. from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, who taught and did research at Harvard's Graduate School of Business and has thirty years of field experience working in Asia, Africa and Latin America for the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). With a background like this one does not expect to read a book like When Corporations Rule the World!!! Moreover, his writing is remarkably honest and extremely clear--one cannot mistake what his values are and what he is saying; this in itself is an unusual blessing. Here's an excerpt that gives the flavor of the book (pp. 9 & 12):

[T]he systemic forces nurturing the growth and dominance of global corporations are at the heart of the current human dilemma.... These forces have transformed once beneficial corporations and financial institutions into instruments of a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonizing ever more of the planet's living spaces, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money.

But let me point out how the author is an authentic conservative as opposed to pseudo-conservatives such as William F. Buckley. Here is Korten's description of his "values" (a much-abused word in contemporary America):

With regard to political values, I remain a traditional conservative in the sense that I retain a deep distrust of large institutions and their concentrations of unaccountable power. I also continue to believe in the importance of the market and private ownership. However, unlike many contemporary conservatives, I have no more love for big business than I have for big government. Nor do I believe that posession of wealth should convey special political privilege. I share the liberal's compassion for the disenfranchised, commitment to equity, and concern for the environment and believe that there are essential roles for government and limits to the rights of private property. I believe, however, that big government can be as unaccountable and destructive of societal values as can big business. Indeed, I have a distrust of any organization that accumulates and concentrates massive power beyond the bounds of accountability.

OK, here's the essential kernel that separates the sheep from the goats: However, unlike many contemporary conservatives, I have no more love for big business than I have for big government. This is what separates many authentic conservatives from pseudo-conservatives. The latter chatter incessantly about the horrors of 'collectivism' inherent in 'big government'; but they are stone silent about the 'collectivism' that is only too obviously involved in the growth of the modern corporation since 1865 in the United States. Korten is a very unusual fellow in that he is consistent on this point.

Actually, I've just been thinking about the meanings of "conservative" and there is a strain within conservatism which says that rule by the rich and well-born is best and that the 'mob' cannot be trusted. (John Adams believed this.) If one takes that seriously then people like William F. Buckley could be labelled 'conservative' in the latter sense because they certainly do support the powers that be. However, in this case Buckley is simply a liar because he does not honestly state that he distrusts the people and thinks the rich and well-born (like himself) should rule; rather he uses a variation of classical liberalism like that of Milton Friedman to rationalize his views and identify himself as a defender of 'liberty'. He attacks the state but is an ardent defender of business and the corporation.

A Thought on American Corporations

2007-04-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

Listening to National Public Radio News this AM I heard a piece on how California and Vermont want to regulate Carbon Dioxide emissions in automobiles and how the auto companies have formed a group to sue them and argue that states do not have the power to regulate these emissions. The Attorney General of Vermont mentioned how this foot-dragging on the part of corporations was just like the huge fuss they put up opposing catalytic converters. Yes, and I'm old enough to recall the fuss they put up about seat belts and airbags too. Corporations have HUGE resources and they use them consistently to fight any social progress that they perceive as a danger to their profits; the hell with the good of society--they just buy up an army of lawyers and PR people to spin and argue that black is white and up is down. That is certainly what tobacco companies did for years regarding cancer and whether nicotine was addictive. Exxon-Mobil has spent millions of dollars funding propaganda that undermines the evidence supporting the existence of global warming. Here's just one article about this. For more go here.

A Thought on the Libertarian Party

2007-04-09T15:51:00.000-05:00

Having gone through the Libertarian Party website and examined their platform my only large problem was their failure to articulate a position with regard to huge muti-national corporations. They have an email address where they say they welcome questions and I asked them about their position regarding corporations but got no answer. I have noticed that writers like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman LOVE to denounce what they don't like in government by using the terms "collectivism" or "collectivization". I frankly can't recall reading how they define the term however. I would include the huge centralization achieved by the modern corporation as a prime example of modern collectivization. If they fail to do so I believe I'd consider that an inconsistency. Although people on the right in America LOVE to idolize Adam Smith it is a little known fact that Adam Smith was seriously concerned about corporations if not opposed to their being too frequently chartered. Why? For one rather obvious reason Smith was thoroughly serious about real competition and felt that owners of businesses should be fully responsible for their business practices and this was most likely to occur if they had something approximating face-to-face relationships with their customers as was the case with single owners and partnerships. Moreover, Smith could see the liklihood that corporations might wield disproportionate power over government and thus distort the political process. Any American who doesn't see that that has occurred in the United States really must have their head in the sand or be a died in the wool pro-corporate ideologue. (For Adam Smith's attitudes toward corporations, he called them "joint stock companies", see the 2003 Bantam Classics edition and read Alan Krueger's Introduction.)

Rep. Ron Paul on Bill Maher Show

2007-04-07T09:20:00.000-05:00

On Friday Mar. 30 Bill Maher had Congressman Ron Paul on his show for an interview. Although Paul was elected a Republican he is a Libertarian and, although Maher thinks of himself as a libertarian he was shocked by some of Paul's stands: Paul had the temerity to suggest that the CIA should be abolished! Maher thought this was just much too extreme and actually stated that he feels a lot safer knowing there's a CIA! Maher is hilarious and I never miss his show but some of his political positions are ludicrous. He actually feels SAFER knowing there's a CIA! What an idiot. Paul rightly pointed out that the CIA has got us into many problems including the overthrow of the constitutional Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 for which many Iranians still hate us. Given the history of absolutely botched intelligence in our recent history Maher really must not have given much thought to this. The greatest threat to America's freedom and perhaps even to America's future existence is the military-intelligence-industrial complex. Eisenhower had that figured out in 1960! Maher's 'libertarianism' is apparently only about a micron deep.

Paul also had said that he thought we shouldn't have fought the US Civil War and Maher again was just shocked by this opinion. I myself have given some thought to this question and don't think it is absolutely clear that the Civil War was on balance a good thing. The one thing that came of it that was good was freedom for the slaves but otherwise what was so great about it? Lincoln's original goal was to preserve the union NOT to free the slaves. He was only pushed to emancipation by the circumstances of a prolonged Civil War; if the North had suceeded militarily sooner the slaves would not have been freed. What would have been so awful, other than slavery, if the South had seceded? They would still have been most economically tied to the North because of our proximity. There was nothing sacred about the union; it had been formed by a very close vote when the Constitution was adopted and there were some shenanigans about the voting that took place for the Constitution. If it took a vote to form the union why shouldn't some states secede later if they so chose? Apparently Bill Maher's "libertarianism" is mostly about freedom to use drugs, sexual freedom, and freedom to be atheistic. I support all of these freedoms as well but for him to be so shocked that someone would think the CIA should be abolished and the Civil War was maybe not such a great idea demonstrates how thin his libertarianism is.

U.S. Provides Israel With Cluster Bombs for Use Against the Lebanese People?

2007-02-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

Israel Misused Cluster Bombs U.S. Delivered last August

State Department Report Delivered to Pelosi and Biden

February 7, 2007

At the height of the Israeli war against Hezbollah last summer, in which hundreds of civilians living in southern Lebanon were killed, the U.S. rushed a request from Israel for more than 1,300 American-made M26 cluster bombs. The request prompted an outcry in Congress and elsewhere that the artillery rockets, which disperse 644 submunitions each, might be used in civilian areas, contrary to the terms of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Last week, the Department of State delivered a preliminary report to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and to Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that is said by the news media to accuse Israel of exactly these charges.

A petition banning the use of cluster bombs and demanding an urgent clean-up of the more than 1 million cluster-bomblets sprayed over southern Lebanon has been launched by the American Task Force for Lebanon, a non-profit non-sectarian group based in Washington, DC. We urge our members to join the campaign that has been endorsed by Ralph Nader by signing their petition: "Stop the Carnage, Ban the Cluster Bomb."

Sign the petition to stop the carnage and ban the cluster bomb!

In the closing days of the war, after a deadline had been set by the U.N. and accepted by both the Israelis and Hezbollah and 72 hours before the ceasefire was to go into effect, the Israeli military fired thousands of cluster munitions into southern Lebanon, leaving behind a deadly legacy. As of January 25, 2007, the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon confirms that 30 people have been killed and 184 injured from unexploded ordnance since August 14, when hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel ended. Many of the casualties have been children.

Cluster bombs have been controversial for many years. They were used by the U.S. army in both Iraq wars, inflicting damage on civilians especially, and by the Israeli army in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, prompting the Reagan administration to suspend shipment of the bombs to Israel for six years. The UK NGO Landmine Action has published evidence that Israel used American cluster munitions with expiration dates as early as 1974, which were made available to Israel from classified U.S. weapons depots in Israel. Thus the American taxpayer is once again supporting the slaughter of civilians through the misuse of its arms exports.

The findings of the State Department report on Israel's misuse of cluster bombs has not yet been made public. A resolution curbing the sale of cluster bombs last September that was introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) failed in the Senate by a vote of 70 to 30. A new resolution is said to be prepared by the senators for introduction in the Senate this year once the furor about the State Department findings has died down.

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Where I've Been

2007-02-03T09:01:00.000-05:00

I put my back out last Monday January 29 and have been flat on the floor ever since. Will return soon.

"Free" Congressional Trips to Israel?

2007-01-27T12:44:00.000-05:00

From the Christian Science Monitor:

The hidden cost of free congressional trips to Israel
By Former-Senator Jim Abourezk

SIOUX FALL, S.D. Democrats in Congress have moved quickly - and commendably - to strengthen ethics rules. But truly groundbreaking reform was prevented, in part, because of the efforts of the pro-Israel lobby to preserve one of its most critical functions: taking members of Congress on free "educational" trips to Israel.

The pro-Israel lobby does most of its work without publicity. But every member of Congress and every would-be candidate for Congress comes to quickly understand a basic lesson. Money needed to run for office can come with great ease from supporters of Israel, provided that the candidate makes certain promises, in writing, to vote favorably on issues considered important to Israel. What drives much of congressional support for Israel is fear - fear that the pro-Israel lobby will either withhold campaign contributions or give money to one's opponent.

In my own experience as a US senator in the 1970s, I saw how the lobby tries to humiliate or embarrass members who do not toe the line.

Pro-Israel groups worked vigorously to ensure that the new reforms would allow them to keep hosting members of Congress on trips to Israel. According to the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper, congressional filings show Israel as the top foreign destination for privately sponsored trips. Nearly 10 percent of overseas congressional trips taken between 2000 and 2005 were to Israel. Most are paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, a sister organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the major pro-Israel lobby group.

New rules require all trips to be pre-approved by the House Ethics Committee, but Rep. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts says this setup will guarantee that tours of Israel continue. Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported consensus among Jewish groups that "the new legislation would be an inconvenience, but wouldn't seriously hamper the trips to Israel that are considered a critical component of congressional support for Israel."

These trips are defended as "educational." In reality, as I know from my many colleagues in the House and Senate who participated in them, they offer Israeli propagandists an opportunity to expose members of Congress to only their side of the story. The Israeli narrative of how the nation was created, and Israeli justifications for its brutal policies omit important truths about the Israeli takeover and occupation of the Palestinian territories.

What the pro-Israel lobby reaps for its investment in these tours is congressional support for Israeli desires. For years, Israel has relied on billions of dollars in US taxpayer money. Shutting off this government funding would seriously impair Israel's harsh occupation.

One wonders what policies Congress might support toward Israel and the Palestinians absent the distorting influence of these Israel trips - or if more members toured Palestinian lands. America sent troops to Europe to prevent the killing of civilians in the former Yugoslavia. But when it comes to flagrant human rights violations committed by Israel, the US sends more money and shields Israel from criticism.

Congress regularly passes resolutions lauding Israel, even when its actions are deplorable, providing it political cover. Meanwhile, polls suggest most Americans want the Bush administration to steer a middle course in working for peace between Israelis and the Palestinians.

Consider, too, how the Israel lobby twists US foreign policy into a dangerous double standard regarding nuclear issues. The US rattles its sabers at Iran for its nuclear energy ambitions - and alleged pursuit of nuclear arms - while remaining silent about Israel's nuclear-weapons arsenal.

Members of Congress may not be aware just how damaging their automatic support for Israel is to America's interest. At a minimum, US policies toward Israel have cost it valuable allies in the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world.

If Congress is serious about ethics reform, it should not protect the Israel lobby from the consequences. A totally taxpayer-funded travel budget for members to take foreign fact-finding trips, with authorization to be made by committee heads, would be an important first step toward a foreign policy that genuinely serves America.

Jim Abourezk is a former Democratic senator from South Dakota and the vice chairman of the Council for the National Interest.

So-Called 'Conservatives' as Government Centralizers

2007-01-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a very interesting but little known book by Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams, Harvard UP, 1964. There are many interesting things about the book but what I want to emphasize here is how mistrustful of the unpropertied masses Adams was. Recall that Adams is nearly universally recognized by conservatives as their prime exemplar in American history, so we get a look at what the biases of 'conservatives' in America are.

While I see Joseph Ellis' book on Jefferson, American Sphinx, as an unfair hatchet job on our third president, reading Handler suggests that if one wanted to, which Handler does NOT, one could write a fairly critical and unempathic view of Adams quite easily. Adams used arguments in support of our war for independence which he later contradicted when opposing the French Revolution. But my primary point here is that Adams was so mistrustful of 'the great unwashed' that it is easy to see how he would have been a centralizer of government power. That he certainly was so is demonstrated by the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts during his administration:

The Sedition Act says anyone "opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States" could be imprisoned for up to two years. It was also illegal to "write, print, utter, or publish" anything critical of the president or Congress.

Oh boy, would Cheney and Bush love that law. I think if you look at the types of political attitudes held by so-called American 'conservatives', whether it be Adams, Hamilton, William F. Buckley, or the 'neo-conservatives' of today, you will find them far more friendly to centralized government power than their rhetoric would like you to believe. They preach checks and balances and divided government, they profess reverence for our Constitution, but in practice their anti-democratic tendencies show in their readiness to support central authority and sacrifice civil liberties whenever they see fit.

What's the Matter With That al Maliki Guy Anyway?

2007-01-26T10:08:00.000-05:00

I reprint here an interesting letter from Ed Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission to Iraq.

A Simple Plan to Support Iraq's Prime Minister

Look, it's not really all that hard. If we are really serious about having Al Maliki, the Prime Minister of a democratically elected unity government, carry out his responsibilities, especially the ones we have publicly assigned him, let's give the guy a chance to demonstrate his problem-solving skills in an environment with challeges that are not only far less difficult but also far less dangerous to our interests. Oh... yeah, and his too.

What I propose is just a quick test, with visible benefits for all parties, that lets him show his stuff. Let's bring him over here, and turn him loose to: a) stamp out inner-city crime; b) settle the abortion issue to the complete satisfaction of all parties; c) win the war on drugs; d) end illegal immigration; e) eliminate corruption. Once those tasks are taken care of, and armed with the admiration and gratitude of the American people, plus the solid, no-longer tentative support of the current Administration, he can go home to Iraq - and fix it. (NB. "On the advice of the legal department, we announce that our Rule is no longer applicable in Iraq." - The Pottery Barn, Inc.)

Once back, with the augmented - No, wait, escalated... No, no... OK, got it, surged military presence required to insure that absolutely everyone, everywhere, understands that he is fully, totally, and completely in charge of every single aspect of goverance, the Prime Minister can address himself to resolving his country's issues.

We all know what he needs to do, and quickly: a) rebuild a totally destroyed infrastructure and the shattered economy it used to support; b) institute something resembling a universally accepted, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, cohesive and fully functional government; c) end sectarian violence; d) create large and effective police and military forces; e) institute total stability and security; f) induce forgiveness and, as necessary, memory loss in those who have suffered the most; and g) secure the blessings of liberty to himself and his posterity. Not necessarily in that order.

I estimate he will need a minimum of, say, eight to ten weeks, after which the entire secure and stable nation (Militias, Turkmen, Shia, Contractors, Sunni, Jews, Kurds, Yazidis, Saabeans, Christians, Collaborators) will be sitting around multiple campfires, democratic to the core, drinking steaming mugs of cocoa, singing Kumbaya and waving as our forces ride off into the sunset.

Won't that be swell? Won't the world admire us, and respect all that we have accomplished? And won't the Iraqi survivors love us?

However, and it is certainly seems entirely possible that those in leadership positions in this country may already have given a great deal of thought to this, we will clearly have someone else to blame when it doesn't work, despite all the help and support we have given Al Maliki What a loser, and it is all, all his fault.

What have we done, and are not yet finished doing, to ourselves, to Iraqis, and to our regional as well as global interests? A catastrophe while we stay; a different catastrophe when we leave. And I sincerely hope I am all wrong.

Amb. Ed Peck

(Please excuse this effort to employ weak humor to underline the arrogant stupidity of what we are asking of a man in minimal charge of a broken non-country. When our CNI delegation (www.cnionline.org) met with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad last January, after observing the Palestinian elections in Gaza, he told us that American officials always demand that he stop, right now!, people crossing the border into Iraq. He said he replies by asking for the Border Patrol to come over and explain how they did it with Mexico, so he can apply the same successful approach. Heavy silence follows, as it should.)

Ambassador Edward L. Peck is former U.S. Chief of Mission to Iraq and participated in a CNI delegation to monitor the Palestinian elections and meet with regional leaders in January 2006. A video chronicling the trip, titled "Islam and Democracy," is available on Amazon.com.

Robert Nisbet on U.S. War Preparation

2007-01-25T16:56:00.000-05:00

In The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America, conservative American sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote his opinions regarding why war and preparation for war have become such powerful influences on American government and on the American people (see my earlier post). He argued first that America's participation in World War I had a large impact upon us. However, when addressing why the defense budget and preparation for war loomed so large in the 1980's when he was writing he noted that the Cold War would not do as a complete explanation even though it was the explanation to which observers most often resorted. He wrote (for a book published in 1988) that there were two forces that "would surely continue to operate even if the Soviet Union were miraculously transformed into a vast religious convent [p. 24]." The first of these forces was the military-industrial complex against which Eisenhower warned us. This included a huge government defense bureaucracy and the "militarization of intellectuals" and "intellectualization of the military." The latter involved the universities which had become so addicted to the money flowing from defense expenditures and the " 'terror experts,' 'strategy analysts,' 'intelligence consultants,'" and others who manned institutes and think tanks and regularly appeared on TV. Nisbet wrote (pp. 28-9) quite presciently:

Even if there were no Soviet Union or its equivalent to justify our monstrous military establishment, there would be, in sum, the whole self-perpetuating military-industrial complex and the technological-scientific elite that Eisenhower warned us against. These have attained by now a mass and an internal dynamic capable of being their own justification for continued military spending.... Take away the Soviet Union as crucial justification, and, under Parkinson's Law, content of some kind will expand relentlessly to fill the time and space left.

This prediction proved true in just 5 years during which the Soviet Union did disappear and 'neo-conservatives' stepped forward to argue that the U.S. must take full advantage of this "unipolar moment" to make sure that no other power would be able to challenge the U.S. again. And, indeed, it was these 'neo-conservatives, the Krauthammers, Kristols, Feiths, Ledeens, et. al. who pushed us to spend yet more on the military and who provided the justification for invading Iraq.

The second force to which Nisbet referred was "the moralization of foreign policy" that began perhaps with Woodrow Wilson but continued up to today. Indeed, the so-called 'neo-conservatives' unite both forces in their rhetoric, they are huge cheerleaders for American military might and perhaps the most extreme moralizers of our foreign policy ever. It is these so-called 'neo-conservatives' who trumpet America's remarkable 'exceptionalism' and virtues and advocate using military might to bring 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'free market capitalism' to the rest of the benighted world. The majority of these individuals are also aggressively pro-Israeli and frequently pro-Zionist, and they support the far-right within Israel as well as in the U.S.

Here Nisbet merits the label 'conservative' because he breaks with pseudo-conservatives like William F. Buckley in noting the swelling of central government by the military and in maintaining some skepticism about "America the Virtuous." You cannot stand for small central government AND huge military budgets and an evangelical foreign policy, as people like Buckley and Reagan tried to do.

The Iran Drumbeat Continues

2007-01-25T12:56:00.000-05:00

An organization I had never heard of before, the American Foreign Policy Council, has started showing 30 second TV ads trying to gin up fear and opposition to Iran. Running TV ads is a pretty expensive business. I wonder where a relatively obscure foreign policy 'think' tank gets the money to run TV ads??? I'd be willing to bet this money comes from the US government. If you go to the link provided above you'll see that these ads are mere propaganda pieces that the right has used to generate fear and hatred against perceived 'enemies.' Although these ads don't yet call for military action against Iran they are the prelude to such calls. Let us consider some facts about Iran that might be worth considering.

Since Iran is a very mountainous country, getting tied down trying to defeat them would be far more difficult than Iraq. Iran is approximately four times the size of Iraq. Iran’s population is 2.4 times the size of Iraq’s population. The advocacy of aerial military bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities would surely motivate Iran to try to seek revenge in whatever effective way it could and one possibility would be to interrupt its oil exports and send the price of oil high enough to trigger a worldwide recession. Iran could also become more actively involved in helping Iraqi insurgents to oppose us. It could also try to sabotage the Saudi oilfields which are just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

Wikipedia: “Iran is OPEC's second largest oil producer, as it exports between four and five million barrels of oil per day; moreover, it holds 10% of the world's confirmed oil reserves. Iran also has the world's second largest natural gas reserves (after Russia).”

In 2005 Iran exported 856,000 barrels of oil per day to Europe, 597,000 barrels per day to Japan, and 205,000 barrels per day to South Korea.

Iran is also a country with many people who have been educated in the U.S. and there are a very considerable number of Iranians who have a friendly attitude toward the U.S.

Although trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is a good idea, just as nuclear non-proliferation is a good idea, the Bush administration's deal to help India's nuclear program, to resrve our right to develop new nuclear weapons, to blink at Israel's nuclear weapons, etc., makes our hypocrisy quite clear to foreigners and makes it less likely we can successfully negotiate with Iran. But negotiate we should, and we will have to be willing to offer something of value to them if we wish to be successful.

Thank You Congressman Jones!

2007-01-24T17:36:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, DC – Today Representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC) introduced H. J. Res. 14, a joint resolution concerning the use of force by the United States against Iran. The resolution requires that – absent a national emergency created by an attack, or a demonstrably imminent attack, by Iran upon the United States or its armed forces – the President must consult with Congress and receive specific authorization prior to initiating any use of military force against Iran.

Did the Framers Work to Avoid "Hypertrophy" of National Government?

2007-01-23T09:08:00.000-05:00

I'm looking at yet another book by conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet, The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America, based upon his 1988 Jefferson Lecture to the National Council of Humanities for which he was invited in the Reagan era by the then Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Dr. Lynne V. Cheney (yes that Lynne Cheney--this gives an idea how the ideological right got such a foothold in the Reagan-Bush 12 years). In this book Nisbet is imagining what would most strike the Framers if they could see the America of today. His imagination leads him to guess they would be most struck by the "prominence of war in American life", "the Leviathan-like...national government", and how "loosely attached to groups" of kinship and community instead of by "the cash nexus."

This list gives an idea why I tend to see Nisbet as in many ways a genuine conservative but one whose analytic powers were blunted by his recognition by and association with modern right-wingers like Reagan and Lynne Cheney. His analysis is suggestive of the themes of a genuine conservatism but he fails to really draw the conclusions an authentic conservative like Peter Viereck would draw because he was too busy consciously or unconsciously protecting his modern sponsors. His mention of "the cash nexus" as the main glue of contemporary America should have led him to oppose someone like Reagan who absolutely glorified business and the search for profit, indeed, the 1980s were dubbed the era of 'greed'. A genuine Burkean conservative would have to be a thorough-going critic of America's devotion to revolutionary industrial capitalism which was the prime force that destroyed local face-to-face groups and made the 'cash nexus' one of the sole social connectors in modern America. If one is worried about the prominence of war in modern America who is more to blame than super-patriotic, hyper-nationalistic Ronald Reagan who devoted so much money to the 'defense' and 'security' establishment? And it is probably the growth of the power of 'defense' and 'security' that have contributed most to the growth of our "Leviathan-like" national government.

Here I want to stress just one point that Nisbet made which I think is flawed: in writing about the "hypertrophy" of our national government (p. xi) he said: "The Framers had worked most diligently to prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government." Having done a lot of reading lately about the Constitutional period this strikes me as a rather partial and inaccurate generalization. The very purpose of the Constitution was to create a more powerful federal government because of the disatisfaction of 'the Framers' with the perceived decentralization of the Articles of Confederation. Many, if not most, of the arguments at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were over just how strong and centralized the federal government would be. Recall that it was "Federalist" centralizers vs. "Anti-Federalist" decentralizers that marked the parties of that era and it was the "Federalist" centralizers, with a lot of help from 'republicans' like James Madison who won out. In Leonard D. White's The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History he wrote (pp. 13-4):

The event which was seldom absent from memory [in the minds of the Framers at the Constitutional Convention] was Shays' rebellion. The ruling consideration was not the revolutionary ardor of the 1770's but the sober necessity of order, commercial recovery, and fiscal rehabilitation.... A strong executive was attained in the Convention only by the hardest and most persistent fighting. At the outset Edmund Randolph had proposed an executive of three, in order to represent the major geographical divisions and to put the "remote parts" on an equal footing with the center.

As we know this proposal of a three person executive was defeated because the Federalists believed that conflicts and animosities between the three would make for too much conflict and result in inaction. James Wilson "preferred a single magistrate, as giving most energy, despatch, and responsibility to the office [White, p. 14]." Roger Sherman of Connecticut argued (p. 14) "An independence of the executive on the supreme legislature was, in his opinion, the very essence of tyrrany...."

In other words, many at the Constitutional Convention argued against a single executive who would be too independent of the legislature because they feared that would lead to "hypertrophy" of central power and to "tyranny". The power and relative independence and "energy" with which the President might act were precisely the issues fought over at the Constitutional Convention and, as we know, the relatively more centralizing views of the "Federalists" prevailed. This history, it seems to me, cannot support Nisbet's careless generalization that: "The Framers had worked most diligently to prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government." If they had been diligent about hypertrophy they would have kept the Articles of Confederation or at most amended them (which is actually what the Convention's original instructions requested; they decided themselves to write a whole new Constitution). Or they could have accepted some of the many suggestions made at the Convention which would have weakened the executive and truly tried to "prevent any future hypertrophy of the federal government."

Limited Liability Law, Corporations, and Moral Hazard

2007-01-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

David Moss in When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager points out (pp. 67-8) that opponents of a Massachusetts limited liability law explicitly made the moral hazard argument:

Another common counterargument was the traditional one: that limitations on liability would encourage reckless behavior. This represented an early articualtion of the moral hazard principle, though the term itself was not used. "Men who are restrained only by the limits of their capital stock," Representative Sturgis maintained, "do not and cannot feel under the apprehension of those who are restrained, each one by his own personal jeopardy,to the amount of all his means: to the extent of his very livelihood.... Your best security always is in the apprehension of your debtor."

Nonetheless, when it came to removing all obstacles to passive investment in corporations, the fear of the moral hazard of irresponsible corporate managers did not carry the day. In 1830 Massachussetts passed a limited liability law.

Moss indirectly also points up a moral hazard of allowing corporations with unlimited liability. When the creditors of corporations could count on all investors to be responsible for the corporation's debt they were thereby encouraged to provide easy credit (p. 66):

the effect was to make credit abundantly available to corporate managers, allowing (and even encouraging) them to borrow recklessly and engage in wild speculation. This is precisely the opposite of what had been argued in 1809, when lawmakers figured that unlimited liability would help to rein in reckless investing.

In 1809 legislators were counting upon corporate investors with unlimited liability to rein in recklessness of borrowing by corporate managers. However, I suspect that Moss' point (p. 64) that "passive investors were largely at the mercy of the corporate directors who managed their companies" was probably most accurate even in ca. 1800. Corporate managers had much control and if creditors--because of unlimited liability--were enticing them with easy borrowing, this was a moral hazard created by the nature of the corporation itself. This situation could have been an argument against corporations.

However, the proponents of a limited liability law used the recklessness of borrowing under unlimited liability as an argument for corporations with limited liability. But corporations with limited liability also were subject to the moral hazard of irresponsible managers. Limited liability might have made creditors more cautious but corporate managers primarily responsible to passive investors still had incentives to be reckless with other people's money. In fact, if limited liability applied to corporate manager-investors it is conceivable there was more manager moral hazard with limited liability than unlimited. With unlimited liability creditors would have an incentive to tempt corporate managers, but managers themselves, with unlimited liability, would also have an incentive to resist temptation.

Another Twist of Public Argument

2007-01-20T15:02:00.000-05:00

Another example of an argument used opportunistically to support the passage of limited liability law for corporate investors is cited by David Moss on p. 65 of When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager.

Naturally, proponents of limited liability offered a variety of other arguments as well. One of the reformers' favorites was that unlimited liability was undemocratic, giving wealthy citizens a substantial advantage in gaining access to capital.

Hmmmmm. So the 'democratic' principle is that 'wealthy citizens' should not have 'substantial advantage'? I guess this 'democratic' principle only applies where certain advocates decide it applies.

One More Point About Hypocrisy Regarding 'Moral Hazard'

2007-01-20T13:43:00.000-05:00

I have often been impressed with how arguments can be creatively twisted in public debate and in courts of law to support almost any outlandish position. In my last post I noted how first state governments passed legislation enabling corporations thus making it possible to collect the money of many passive investors and place it in the hands of corporate directors, and then these state governments passed limited liability legislation protecting investors from responsibility for corporate debts above the limit of their personal investment. I noted how both the allowance of corporations and limited liability law created their own 'moral hazards.'

It is interesting to note that when Massachussets was debating whether to pass limited liability legislation the then Governor, an advocate of limited liability, used the following argument (David Moss, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager, 2002, p. 64):

"It is not reasonably to be expected," Governor [Levi] Lincoln had observed in 1825, "that prudent men, except under particular circumstances of personal confidence in their associates, should be ready to incur even the possible risk of utter ruin, for the chance of profit, in the joint stock of a manufacturing concern."

In other words, the Governor was arguing that since investors in joint stock corporations were only passive investors, they required the guarantee of limited liability to be encouraged to invest where they had no opportunity for 'personal confidence in their associates' because the corporate directors were likely not personal associates.

So first the state of Massachussets passes legislation enabling corporations thereby creating a class of passive investors and creating the moral hazard of directors risking other people's money; and then, arguing that this newly created class of passive investors would not be sufficiently motivated to invest unless the state limited their liability as well, created yet additional moral hazards both for corporate directors and passive investors. Instead of arguing that perhaps the state shouldn't have enabled corporations and passive investors in the first place, the Governor parlays the original bet on corporations into the perceived necessity to limit the liability of passive investors in order to provide them sufficient motivation to invest.

To me this is a fascinating use of argument. Instead of considering the hypothesized reluctance of passive investors to risk their money in joint stock companies as perhaps a reasonable hesitancy of 'prudent men', or considering this reluctance as a possible indication that joint stock companies may have been a flawed idea, Governor Lincoln argued that this reluctance to "incur even the possible risk of utter ruin" must itself be swept away by limiting the liability of passive investors and actively encouraging them to risk their capital in joint stock companies.

If one is convinced that corporations and passive investors and limited liability are essential prods to economic growth I guess the Governor's argument makes sense. But there is an interesting lack of concern about moral hazard when it is argued that initial moral hazards were not enough and now we are required to create yet additional moral hazards to encourage both corporate directors and passive investors to take risks they might not normally be willing to take. In this phase of American history government is aggressively intervening in the economy to encourage risk taking. Later it will be argued that workers must take total responsibility for themselves and any even imagined possibility of certain types of risk taking on their part must be severely discouraged.

American Hypocrisy About Government 'Meddling'

2007-01-20T12:25:00.000-05:00

In David Moss' When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager it is clearly laid out how much help state and federal governments provided for business and manufacturing in the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s: governments provided loans, allowed businesses to raise money through lotteries, provided cash awards for high quality textile products, passed laws enabling incorporation allowing companies to raise money from many passive investors, and passed laws allowing investors to assume only limited liability if the company failed to pay its debts.

Again, many people thought these aids were a good idea and if you do too that is fine. They probably were a good idea. But if government intervention was 'good' when it was helping businessmen to accumulate the fabulous wealth and power they did in the 19th and 20th centuries, why did it become 'bad' when governments turned to help workers and consumers in the late 19th and 20th centuries? I believe it is because having accumulated the vast wealth and power businesspeople had, they then used this to actively promote an ideology protecting their privileges and power. Since many attempts to help workers and consumers would cost businesses somewhat more, and since regulations inhibited the freedom of business to do what it pleased, businesspeople and their many allies within universities, the press, the legal profession, among politicians, et. al. aggresively promoted the laissez faire philosophy that said it was very bad for the government to 'meddle' in the economy.

It had been great for government to do all those things to help business but that was long ago and few remembered or reminded us about all that government had done. After the industrial revolution had completely changed the face of American society creating a huge working class and huge cites where before an agricultural society had existed, now it was bad for government to 'meddle' by passing child labor laws, legislating to protect women workers, passing laws for workers compensation for on the job injuries, etc.

And one of the major arguments used by opponents of legislation to aid workers was that such laws would create 'moral hazard.' If we passed legislation protecting workers against on the job injuries then workers would be encouraged to be more careless and would be discouraged from saving for their own security. Horrors! However, earlier legislation allowing businesses to incorporate and attract many passive investors and limiting the liability of these passive investors--this legislation won the day. Yet, a momemt's thought suggests that allowing corporations and limiting the liability of investors obviously created its own 'moral hazards.' Allowing corporate directors to raise large amounts of money from passive investors would encourage corporate directors to be more careless with Other People's Money than they would have been with only their own at risk. As David Moss wrote (p. 64):

With little or no control over the day-to-day affairs of their corporations, passive investors were largely at the mercy of the corporate directors who managed their companies.

This limited responsibility of corporate directors would encourage irresponsibility or 'moral hazard.' The passage of limited liability laws protecting investors from responsibility for corporate debts also would create moral hazards: such laws protected the director-investors too, thus encouraging them to take more risk with their limited responsibility, and these laws would encourage investors to be less careful with their investment dollars because their corporate debt responsibilities were limited. But, somehow all these pro-business 'moral hazards' that seemed to have worked out well for economic growth were forgotten. When it came to protecting workers and consumers imagined 'moral hazards' were conjured up to oppose and defeat such legislation.

Very Important New Article by Richard Falk

2007-01-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

In the first number of the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies there is a must-read article by Richard Falk on the Bush administration/neo-con/Israeli strategy to dominate the entire Middle East. (You can get a free PDF copy of the article by registering.) This is one of the best articles I've read because it ties together the neo-con, pro-Israeli right's plans--by emphasizing the 1996 Clean Break document as well as the Project for the New American Century document of 2000--with the Bush administration's war in Iraq and current threats toward Iran and Syria.

There REALLY is a plan by extremist neo-cons who are rabidly pro-Israeli (not just pro-Israel but aggressively supportive of the most expansionist right-wing Likud agenda) to see the US and Israel dominate the Middle East and get rid of any Middle Eastern governments of which they disapprove. As Falk points out the Iraq War was to be merely the first step in this strategy. Falk writes that even though the Iraq War has gone catastrophically these people have not at all given up and the Israeli attack upon Lebanon last summer was another step in this strategy which now turns to trying to drum up support for some kind of attack upon Iran. I suspect that the saber rattling of the Bush administration toward Iran in the last few days shows that they are trying to set the stage for either an American attack upon Iran--justified as part of 'hot pursuit' of alleged Iranians across the Iraqi-Iranian border--or an Israeli attack upon Iran's nuclear plants. As Falk writes:

But rather than abandon geopolitical ambitions, it appears from recent developments that Israel is testing the waters for an all-out regional war, with strong encouragement by the US government taking a variety of overt forms: a public build-up of deployed air strike forces backed by war plans for the destruction of up to 10,000 targets in Iran (See Plesch 2006); unconditional diplomatic support for Israel’s responses, including blocking for several weeks in the UN Security Council and elsewhere widely favoured calls for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon; and the undisguised provision to Israel in the midst of the war of large quantities of aviation fuel and a rushed shipment of additional bombs.

This, unfortunately, is an EXTREMELY SERIOUS matter to which too few Americans are paying attention. Given what I know about the extremism of Bush and Cheney and their extremist pseudo-conservative advisors I believe there is a very significant chance that Bush/Cheney will either do something to initiate war with Iran or support the Israelis in attacking Iran. As Falk says, this risks the chance of a regional Middle Eastern war which could have devastating consequences domestically (oil prices and our whole economy) and internationally.

Funny Bumper Stickers

2007-01-18T12:21:00.000-05:00

Here are some ideas for funny bumper stickers someone sent me:

Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore

The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President

America: One Nation, Under Surveillance

That's OK; I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway

They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It

Jail to the Chief

We Need a President Who's Fluent in at Least One Language

We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

At Least Nixon Resigned

1/20/09: End of an Error

Let's Fix Democracy in This Country First

Great American Myths

2007-01-18T08:40:00.000-05:00

What I think of as the American Ideology is based upon some remarkable myths that live on and on though careful examination of our history demonstrates their utter falsity. One of the most central of these myths is that our history and success is based primarily upon 'rugged individualism.' Now don't get me wrong, America is a relatively individualistic country; but this individualism was much more in evidence when Tocqueville made his famous visit to America in the 1830s. This visit was largely before the primary effects of the Industrial Revolution had taken place. In the 1830s there were only the beginnings of manufacturing enterprises and railroads were in their infancy.

Moreover, our individualism was made possible by unique circumstances. We were inhabiting a large and abundantly rich continent whose prior inhabitants were no match for our technology and would in due time be killed or penned up on reservations largely of our choosing. (What happened to the Native Americans is what is currently happening to the Palestinians; if the Israelis are successful, as they have been so far, eventually the remaining Palestinians will be penned up in enclaves largely of the Israelis choosing.) Happening to have settled a very rich and extensive territory with only a small number of people Americans had the luxury of being individualists; there was enough territory so that most families could have their own plot of land to build a home and raise food for at least their own needs. In feudal Europe there was an already existent division of land and tenure that was very difficult to displace; not so in relatively virgin American territory.

But even given these unique circumstances facilitating individualism in America, it wasn't long before our government started to institute policies which replaced a relatively pure individualism with corporate forms. As David Moss wrote (p. viii) in When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager "deep government involvement in the management of private sector risks is nothing new in the United States, despite the nation's reputed commitment to laissez-faire." Or (p. 2): "Even in a country well known for its hostility to government, policymakers have emerged as aggressive risk managers. The purpose of this book is to explain both how and why this has come to be." Indeed, Moss continued (p. 3):

A close look at American history reveals that state and federal policymakers had been [providing insurance against certain economic risks]... at least since the dawn of the Republic. Yet most accounts in the popular press foster the opposite impression--that government 'meddling' with private sector risks is of recent vintage. Articles on the subject often hark back to some earlier time, when America was full of vigor and individualist spirit and when every citizen faced his own risks with a sense of stoic independence and pride. But such a time never really existed.

Let us just take one very important example which demonstrates very clearly that the American Ideology's myth of individualist free enterprise is thoroughly misleading: the legislative creation of public corporations and the passage of limited liability laws to protect passive investors.

The corporation itself, as Chief Justice John Marshall described it (Moss, p. 57) is "an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law." There are 'natural' individuals like you and me; we are naturally occurring beings that it took no legislature to create. 'Individualism' refers to us naturally occurring persons. And business originally was conducted by natural individuals, who owned and managed their own businesses and farms. Even the partnership involved active owner-investors who ran their own businesses. But then the state stepped in and created the corporation which made it possible for there to be passive investors, people who invested capital in a business but were not active managers. Thus, the very creation of the corporation itself, was the result of government supporting through legislation the accumulation of large scale capital for manufacturing enterprise. (Note also that creation of passive investors and corporations contributed to the loss of local, face-to-face community that conservative writers like Robert Nisbet deplore. When business was local and owned and operated by an active investor-owner you were more likely to conduct business and have a relationship with that owner. With the growth of corporations and passive investors more social 'distance' is created between the consumer and the business owner.)

I am not here addressing whether this was a good idea or not; my point is that in the very early history of America government was actively and positively supporting economic enterprise and pushing it away from the true individualism of natural persons who owned and managed their own businesses and farms, toward artificial and corporate forms. This is just as much government 'intervention' in the economy as today's interventions; the difference is that when government 'intervenes' to aid business there are fewer complaints; however, when government 'intervenes' to help naturally occurring individuals with workers compensation, unemployment, old age insurance, or health insurance--then the cries of those who have benefitted so greatly from previous government 'intervention' are heard complaining of government 'meddling', 'moral hazard', and the loss of our 'rugged individualism.'

But having created the corporation through legislative intervention in the economy, this was not enough. Apparently passive investors in corporations who could be sued for any and all debts the corporation incurred was too much of a risk for these rugged individual passive investors to be expected to take. Thus, legislatures passed limited liability laws protecting passive investors against any greater losses than the extent of their personal investment. This shifted risk from the passive investors in corporations to the creditors of these corporations; with such limited liability protections apparently more investors were willing to provide capital to corporate manufacturing enterprises facilitating the use of Other People's Money and the accumulation of capital available to corporate managers.

Again, whether you think this was the greatest thing since sliced bread--as many in America indeed did--or not, is NOT the point of this discussion. The passage of limited liability laws was quite clearly government 'intervention' in the economy just as much as is legislation passed today that would place limits upon corporate power. The difference is that today's corporations were provided these legislative advantages as much as 150-200 years ago and have had this time to grow rich and fat and develop armies of mercenaries who will now come to their aid when any contemporary threat to their government-provided privileges is mounted; indeed, the business class has one whole political party, the Republican Party, devoted almost entirely to defending its privileges. (Yes, the Democrats also are pro-business but of the two parties the Democrats are by far the more likely to try to take small steps to level the playing field by supporting the interests of ordinary working people as well as those of the business class. Besides, I am not anti-business, I am anti-special privileges and power that enable one sector of the society to confuse, obfuscate and dominate other sectors of society.)

Why Is 'Moral Hazard' a Problem for the Less Privileged But Not for the More Privileged?

2007-01-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

The concept of "moral hazard" is an interesting one; one definition is "if you cushion the consequences of bad behaior, then you encourage that bad behavior (see On the Genealogy of Moral Hazard, Tom Baker, Texas Law Review, December 1996, 75 Tex, L. Rev. 237)." This was a concern with business fire insurance in the 19th century because the latter might increase the likelihood of arson by an unscrupulous businessman. I'm not entirely sure why this isn't an argument against all insurance; if the insurer takes on a good deal of the risk of loss wouldn't the moral hazard argument suggest that the insured would have less incentive to protect against loss? Insurance could be considered a relative of socialism in that it replaces individual responsibility with social responsibility. Of course insurance began with the more privileged classes; merchants wanted to protect themselves against being wiped out by loss of a shipment so they devised methods of sharing risk. When the gentry does it it's not a problem.

Former-Congressman Dick Armey was fond of saying, "social responsibility is a euphemism for individual irresponsibility." This implies that insurance encourages individual irresponsibility as do limited liability legislation, business bankruptcy legislation, etc. However, demagogues like Armey don't attack the latter, they save their venom for legislation that would protect less privileged individuals against risk.

In an interesting book called When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager David Moss describes how it was a terrific idea to protect business from risk in the United States in the 19th century by the use of limited liability legislation for corporations, controls on the issuance of bank notes, bankruptcy legislation to give businessmen a 'fresh start', etc. However, when we get to the beginning of the 20th century and there is a movement for workmen's compensation legislation, or social insurance to protect workers against unemployment and provide for old age, now come the privileged classes and their hired guns screaming that such protections would create 'moral hazard', workers will be motivated to take less care in the workplace, be less motivated to find work, and be less motivated to save for their own retirement.

And we still hear the same worn arguments to this day. If government is called on to help bail out the savings and loans at taxpayers expense that's necessary, however, if government could solve the healthcare insurance mess this would lead to moral hazard and people either using too much health care or not taking good enough care of their health.

Robert Nisbet's Conservatism

2007-01-12T13:24:00.000-05:00

American sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-96) wrote a book entitled Conservatism: Dream and Reality, which was published in 1986. Nisbet was a widely read, erudite fellow and the book adds some things to other writings on conservatism, at least it articulates some conservative principles in a fresh manner. However, there are several things that bother me about the book. One of these is Nisbet's giving far more words to criticism of the French Revolution than he does to the Industrial Revolution. On p. 64 Nisbet wrote:

Yet another aspect of the conservative philosophy of property in modern history is found in the frequent criticisms of capitalism, together with its industrialism, commerce, and technology, by conservatives. As I have stressed above, conservativism is almost as much a response to the industrial as the democratic revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

I have several problems with this statement: 1) my reading suggests that it is not true that his emphasis has been almost as much on the industrial revolution; as I read him criticism of the French Revolution gets far more attention and always is mentioned first, while the critique of capitalism and industrialism appears as second and something tacked on after fulsome criticism of the French Revolution; and, 2) this "democratic revolution at the end of the eighteenth century" must, in large part be a a reference to the French Revolution and it is at least questionable whether that Revolution was primarily 'democratic' as it had significant elitist elements. In general, I think Nisbet and other conservatives use 'democratic' somewhat loosely. He certainly approves of the republican, representaive system articulated in the U.S. Constitution which was certainly democratic in some sense even if not absolutely so.

His secondary emphasis on the Industrial Revolution and capitalism is important because it seems to me likely that these forces have had far more profound influence upon the modern world than the French Revolution. Certainly this is utterly true of the United States; the U.S. Constitution and federal government were already in place when the French Revolution occurred and although the latter was a topic of heated debate in the U.S. it had minimal influence upon U.S. institutions. However, the only true social revolution the U.S. has undergone is the Industrial Revolution. I believe American 'conservatives' like Nisbet are less consistent in the application of conservative principles to the Industrial Revolution because that would be a bit too non-conformist in the USA. The American Ideology pretty much holds capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in the highest regard for their contribution to American consumer abundance. Nonetheless, I believe it is inconsistent and timid to hold certain principles and yet soft pedal their application where it is politically inconvenient.

Nisbet makes it clear that the revolutionary social change, the destruction of local groups and authority and 'massification' of modern urban capitalist life, the crass materialism, and the individualism of American industrial capitalism are thoroughly repugnant to a genuine conservative philosophy; yet glorification and protection of American industrial capitalism are a major tenet in the pseudo-conservatism of William F. Buckley, et. al. from the the 1950s until today. Under the pressures of political ambition and will to power, actual conservative principles have been jettisoned by American pseudo-conservatives.

Militant Pseudo-Conservatives and Israel Are Leading Us Toward Armageddon

2007-01-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

Many opined that after the fall of Rumsfeld and the Democratic Party sweep in the last election that so-called 'neo-conservatives' had been defeated. If you believe that you are endangering yourself and your loved ones. 'Neo-con' and American Enterprise Institute staffer Frederick Kagan is the author of the 'new' troop buildup plan Pres. Bush announced last night. Bush is still thoroughly influenced by and agrees with these American Enterprise Institute extremists.

The London Times revealed Sunday that Israel is planning to carry out an attack upon Iran's nuclear sites with the first nuclear weapons to be used since 1945. The world's craziest right-wingers are still in the saddle. The U.S.'s blind, knee-jerk support for almost anything Israel wants to do in combination with the radically pro-Israel 'neo-conservatives' in this country appear to me to be dragging the world toward confrontations in the Middle East with extreme and unpredictable consequences. This is the path that led us into Iraq: wild, extremist actions, without any plan or apparent concern about what the consequences will be are the modus operandi of these right-wing extremists. We may be treated to an 'experiment' in which we get to see what happens when Israel uses nuclear weapons against a muslim country. The crazy, extremist right is the best recruiting agency the Muslim extremists ever had.

In my original post I pointed out how irresponsible William Kristol was re Iran:

Claiming that Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran but with its own extensive political and social base among the 40% Shia population in Lebanon, is identical with Iran, Kristol suggested that either the United States or Israel “consider countering this act of Iranian (sic) aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? ... Yes, there would be repercussions—and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.”

William Kristol and his pseudo-conservative ilk are not one iota less crazy than the most extreme ravings of the French Revolution's Jacobins.

How Did the US Lose "Community"?

2007-01-09T12:02:00.001-05:00

In recent posts I've pointed out the central value that genuine conservatives place upon local, face-to-face, decentralized groups: family, school, church, local government, etc. These are what make up a true sense of "community." Robert Nisbet (1913-96) was an American sociologist and conservative who was invited by President Reagan to give a prestigious lecture in the late 1980s as recognition of his conservative contribution. I haven't read enough Nisbet yet to determine if I'd categorize him as a genuine conservative or pseudo-conservative but I'll be reading more soon. Probably his most famous book was published in 1953 as The Quest for Community which he later republished as Community and Power (1962, Oxford UP). As I said in a previous post:

Usually such analyses [of the loss of face-to-face community] (see Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community, first published in 1953) have emphasized the state as sucking up the powers of localities and creating the mass society. I suspect this is because in America it is relatively rare to read mainstream academics who are willing to criticize American industrialization leading to huge centralized corporations as a primary factor in creating atomized ‘mass’ individuals whose primary function is to consume in a self-indulgent fashion.

Let's examine what it was in American life that led to the loss of face-to-face community? In 1957 American historian Samuel P. Hays published a rather popular book entitled The Response to Industrialism: 1885-1914. This is an excellent look at this period. Hays' (pp. 1-2) opening paragraphs stated:

The history of modern America is, above all, a story of the impact of industrialism on every phase of human life. It is difficult for us today fully to imagine the implications of this change, for we did not know an earlier America firsthand.... Looking backward scarcely more than forty or fifty years, [the American of 1914] fully recognized that his country had changed rapidly and fundamentally.... Seldom, if ever, in American history had so much been altered within the lifetime of a single man.... Formerly, perhaps, he had resided in the intimate surroundings of his town or rural community. If he remained there in 1914, he had encountered with some fear the expansion into the countryside of a new urban culture that threatened the familiar order with strange, even dangerous, ides. Or moving to Chicago, one of the nation's rapidly growing urban centers, he had experienced the indifference of city people toward each other, which contrasted sharply with the atmosphere of the small community from which he had come.... If he had been especially sensitive to personal values, he would have looked with horror upon the way in which the impersonal forces of industrialism seemed to place one at the mercy of influences far beyond one's control. In such an atmosphere how could personal character count for anything; how could anyone exercise personal responsibility?

And these are from the first two paragraphs of a 193 page book. I find it difficult to understand how writers like Nisbet can blame the centralized government for the atomization of local communities into mass urban societies where local authority based upon small face-to-face groups has been lost. Industrialization in the 19th century created a 'social revolution' possibly comparable at least in part to the French Revolution. However, since our social values are so partial to business, economic progress and industrialization, I think some writers pass over this because it would seem to attack the very foundations of American values; rather it is so much easier to blame it on the central government because anti-government feeling is almost equal to pro-business feeling in the American ideology.

I am NOT saying that we ought to roll back the clock to a pre-industrial age or any such thing. My point is a descriptive one: if we are trying to understand the breakdown of local 'autonomous' social groups and the trading of local community and local authority for modern atomized 'mass society' then let's be accurate about what the primary cause was; it was industrialization.

Examining Genuine American Conservatism

2007-01-06T08:42:00.000-05:00

In my continuing attempt to define conservatism and to clarify what 'conservatism' means in an American context I am currently re-reading Clinton Rossiter's Conservatism in America (Second Edition Revised, 1962). This is a wise and important book that deserves more attention 45 years after this Second Edition appeared.

But let me remind why this whole definitional project is necessary. If one goes back to my first post, Why Pseudo-Conservatives are not "Conservative", you can see that it is essential that I carefully define what 'conservative' actually means. This is necessary preparatory to showing that most of those Americans usually referred to today as "conservatives" or "neo-conservatives" are in fact not 'conservative' at all but are radicals pressing programs of extreme change in American life which, if they continue to be successful, will probably lead to the decline and fall of what has been admirable in American life and values. To a large extent this is the brunt of Claes Ryn's identification of "the New Jacobins" in his America the Virtuous.

Let me briefly sketch some of Clinton Rossiter's main points. First, he distinguished "Conservatism" with a capital 'C' from small 'c' conservatism, and he did so for an excellent reason. Conservatism (capital 'C') is the tradition of socio-political philosophy going back to Edmund Burke (1729-97). Rossiter rightly claims that since America was founded upon a basically 'liberal' tradition that emphasized, reason, progress, individualism, democracy, liberty and equality, and since nearly all Americans subscribe to this basically 'liberal' philosophy, that Burkean Conservatism is not prominent in America's primary traditions. Remember that Burke's founding of Conservatism was a reaction to the first truly social revolution in modern history, the French Revolution. The French Revolution was a truly social revolution because it aimed at society-wide overthrow of most of the foundations of France up to that time: it aimed to overthrow the monarchy as a system of government and replace it with a republican form of government, it aimed to overthrow the higher social orders of nobility and priesthood as privileged rulers of society, with the priesthood it aimed to overthrow the existence of an Established religion and replace it with Reason as religion, and it aimed to overthrow what remained of a feudal economy with one based more on freedom of enterprise (see William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, Second Edition, 1988).

In comparison to the great French social revolution against which Burke inveighed, the so-called "American Revolution" is really more appropriately labeled a War for Independence; it was certainly not a social revolution. Perhaps this is why Burke was relatively sympathetic to American colonial complaints. After the War for Independence America was socially, politically, and legally nearly identical with what it had been prior to that War. Thus, America was founded upon English constitutional liberalism and, since it never had a feudal nobility, a local monarchy or an established religion, it never needed a social revolution; it has been based upon a liberal philosophy from its inception.

So American conservatism must always be seen as existing within this essentially liberal tradition. That is why I quoted Peter Viereck in a prior post so prominently: :

…romanticizing conservatives refuse to face up to the old and solid historical roots of most or much American liberalism…. In contrast, a genuinely rooted, history-minded conservative conserves the roots that are really there, exactly as Burke did…. American history is based on the resemblance between moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism…. The Burkean builds on the concrete existing historical base, not on a vacuum of abstract wishful thinking. When, as in America, that concrete base includes British liberalism of the 1680’s and New Deal reforms of the 1930’s, then the real American conserver assimilates into conservatism whatever he finds lasting and good in liberalism and in the New Deal…. [I]n America it is often the free trade unions who unconsciously are our ablest representatives of the word they hate and misunderstand: conservatism. The organic unity they restore to the atomized ‘proletariat’ is… providential…. So we come full circle in America’s political paradox; our conservatism, in the absence of medieval feudal relics, must grudgingly admit it has little real tradition to conserve except that of liberalism—which then turns out to be a relatively conservative liberalism.(last emphasis added)

Point: Rossiter, like Viereck, shows that American small 'c' conservatism has to be seen as based within an essentially liberal tradition and thus won't be precisely the same as Burkean capital 'C' Conservatism. Indeed, as Rossiter wrote on p. 96:

even in [America's] most conservative moments, when we most want to be at rest, we come to rest on a tradition--the famous Liberal tradition--that speaks out loud and clear in the language of liberty and equality, democracy and progress, adventure and opportunity. This is the reason that no one, neither the foreign observer nor the American himself, will ever quite understand what the American says and does. The American, like his tradition, is deeply liberal, deeply conservative. If this is a paradox, so, too, is America.

However, Rossiter made a point that I believe is fundamental to understanding a force within the American experience that really does come closest to meriting the label "revolutionary": the force set free by American capitalism in the latter part of the 19th century, the force of the Industrial Revolution. Although it is frequently a subordinate point in Rossiter's book, he nonetheless notes that the Industrial Revolution was probably the major revolutionary force in American history (at least, I would argue, until the 20th century). Rossiter (p. 16), when recounting "important events for the rise of conscious conservatism" mentions the French Revolution and Burke's critique of it and then adds "the Industrial Revolution, which made change rather than stability the essential style of the social process...." On pages 94-6 Rossiter enlarges on the significance of the American Industrial Revolution in a passage I consider extremely important and which I here quote at length:

we must... [make] the distinction between change, a transformation of values or institutions in which government plays no direct part, and reform, a transformation... through the conscious use of political authority. Industrialization, which puts children to work in factories, is change; child-labor legislation, which takes them out again, is reform. When men build railroads or invent assembly lines or convert atomic energy into power, thus transforming the lives of millions of people, that is change. When other men pass laws to regulate railroads or raise wages of men on assembly lines or license producers of atomic power, that is reform. Now, if we look again at our history, we find that many of our so-called conservatives, the "wise and good and rich" on the American Right, were in an important sense not conservatives at all. While they could always be counted on to oppose reform, they were casual or at best ambivalent about change. In point of fact, they had an immense stake in social change--specifically, in the transformation of this country from a predominantly agrarian-rural to a predominantly industrial-urban society.... [T]hey worked vast changes in every part of our system. They were, indeed, among the most marvelous agents of social and moral change the world has ever known, and it does them something less than historical justice to classify them simply as conservatives.

The liberals, on the other hand--the great progressives like Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan, La Follette and Wilson--were deeply troubled by the restless, untamed surge toward the Hamiltonian dream of busy factories and bustling cities. Each of these men, in his own generation, saw the order he knew and loved being weakened by the rapid advances of invention and technology. And each, in his own way, looked to reform to chasten change and mitigate its worst effects....

After the Civil War, when at last it became apparent to both sides that government was alone equal to the challenge of change, the progressives shifted their attitude toward political authority from hostility to sympathy, while the men of the Right, who were willing to use government to their own ends but not to see others use it against them, moved into a posture of determined opposition to reform. The paradoxes in the American experience had come to full flower: the agents of change were opposed to reform, the opponents of change committed to it. Small wonder that words like liberalism and conservatism lost much of their meaning for Americans, especially since both sides in the struggle were now arguing in the language of full-blooded Liberalism.

What Rossiter came close to saying here is that it is persons known as 'liberals' and 'progressives' who have been most concerned to 'conserve' the values they saw in American society at its founding and before industrilization and urbanization so profoundly changed it.

Let me just add a note to clarify what I meant above when I said that the Industrial Revolution was the most socially mutative force "at least, I would argue, until the 20th century." I suspect that there have been two forces in American history that have wrought changes coming closest to meriting the term 'revolutionary', the Industrial Revolution that began in the 19th century and the rise of American imperialism that began shortly before the end of the 19th century (see Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow). It is precisely the present-day pseudo-conservative's knee-jerk allegiance to protecting the power of those who run and benefit from huge corporations made possible by the Industraial Revolution and this same pseudo-conservative's thoroughly unbalanced and belligerent support for contemporary American imperialism and world domination that makes the pseudo-conservative the most powerful voice for extremism and radical change on the contemporary American scene. "Conservative" indeed!

Another Set of Conservative Principles

2007-01-04T15:31:00.000-05:00

While I'm trying to define the basic principles of genuine conservatism here is an attempt to do something similar by one of the most famous of the New Conservatives of the 1950s, Russell Kirk; click here for his "Ten Conservative Principles."

While I don't have much problem with his ten conservative principles I do believe Kirk took positions, under the influence of Goldwater, Buckley and others, that were contradictory to a genuine commitment to his abstract principles. For example, Kirk says nothing here about what has been justified in the name of American nationalism, 'defense' and 'security.' But many of the things advocated by pseudo-conservatives would significantly conflict with at least these Kirkian principles:

the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.

conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.

conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.

As Claes Ryn demonstrates repeatedly in America the Virtuous, there are no apparent restraints upon the nationalistic passions of most of today's so-called 'conservatives'. And 'involuntary collectivism' is enforced by the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and attacks upon the 'patriotism' of any who disagree with the increasingly dictatorial George W. Bush administration.

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 4

2007-01-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

I think there is at least one more basic principle of conservatism that I left out in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3: this involves a distrust of 'direct' or 'plebiscitary' democracy. Ryn, in America the Virtuous (p. 50-1), wrote, "Plebiscitary democracy aspires to rule according to the popular majority of the moment.... The American Framers... had a very low opinion of what they called 'democracy' or 'pure democracy.' They associated it with demagoguery, rabble-rousing, opportunism, ignorance, and general irresposibility.... While envisioning broad popular participation in politics, they sought to shield most of those charged with making decisions from the momentary popular will."

This mistrust of direct democracy may be in part a corollary of the first principle mentioned: since humans are subject to base motives it would be dangerous to trust too much in direct democratic decisions that were not sifted through a system of representation, division of powers, and checks and balances; the latter would increase the liklihood that prudence and moderation would prevail. Again, a problematic tension is created by recognition that governments are frequently more servile to privileged classes and may tend to ignore the less privileged. If a representational system, with division of powers and checks and balances were significantly unfair to less privileged groups and gave little opportunity for change, problems of justice and fairness would likely be created. Such a system might protect against the baser motives of the less privileged while facilitating the selfishness, greed and will to power of the privileged. Indeed, it has been argued that the American Constitution itself was created by and for the more privileged classes of the 1780s (see Charles A. Beard's "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution", first published in 1913 and still very readable and interesting; of course, as might be expected this book was savagely criticized by others who thought it was 'un-American'; but see Robert A. McGuire's "To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution", 2003; apparently some still believe that Beard's thesis had merit. For an interesting case study of the privileged classes taking advantage of the less privileged in Massachusetts under the Articles of Confederation see Leonard L. Richards' "Shays's Rebellion", 2003.)

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 3

2007-01-04T10:24:00.000-05:00

In Part 1 and Part 2 I've tried to present a serviceable definition of genuine conservatism, as opposed to the witchs' brew of contradictory beliefs that William F. Buckley and his colleagues pasted together in the 1950s and arbitrarily decided to call 'conservatism'; the latter should be labelled, as Peter Viereck did, pseudo-conservatism. In this post I continue to cite Claes Ryn's views of conservatism as presented in his America the Virtuous. In Parts 1 and 2 I mentioned two essential elements of modern conservatism: 1) the recognition of baser human motives and the imperative need to exert self-control and social control over them; 2) the emphasis upon the importance of local, face-to-face groups like the family, church, and local community; where local leadership is the fundamental basis of social organization as opposed to distant, centralized authorities which drain localities of their power.

A third key component of conservative belief is an emphasis upon the importance of historically evolved, concrete, existing social institutions which are held to represent the wisdom of ages; since they have developed slowly over many years they are believed to serve real concrete human needs. Ryn wrote (p. 45): “For Burke, a civilized society is the result of a slow, protracted, and often painful process of selection and accumulation.” Favored terms conservatives use to capture this are 'rooted', 'historical', and 'concrete.' Conservatives, harking back to Edmund Burke's critique of the French Revolution, are quite suspicious of ‘human reason’ in the sense of “the old urge to replace historically evolved societies with an order framed according to abstract, allegedly universal principles, notably that of equality." It is important to note that conservatives do not oppose all social change; as Edmund Burke wrote: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” Rather genuine conservatives advocate small, prudent, moderate, evolutionary changes as specific needs manifest themselves as felt by members of society. Ryn wrote (p. 45): "It is necessary, Burke argued, to approach historically evolved society with respect and humility as well as a critical eye and to be cautious in making changes. Innovation may do damage that the reformers in their preoccupation with their own favorite abstract ideas are not able to foresee.” It is precisely this principle that put the 'conserve' in 'conservatism.' Without a priciple such as this no belief system deserves the name 'conservative.'

This is perhaps the stress of conservatism which contains the most potential for mischief. It is often true that existing social institutions were established and continue to serve the needs of privileged groups within a historical society, and as such they deny many of the needs of the least privileged groups. Certainly some American conservatives have recognized this, e.g., Clinton Rossiter, and if reasonable freedom from exploitation is to be built into a society the means of change would have to include channels through which the least privileged groups could effectively make their needs known and achieve reasonable social changes. The conservative's emphatic respect for existing institutions could easily facilitate the will to power, domination and even tyranny that another conservative principle--the imperative need to control such base human motives--wants to minimize and avoid. This is perhaps the central contradictory tension within conservatism.

Finally, at least according to Ryn, conservatism endorses a modest patriotic pride in one’s countries achievements but it opposes excessive nationalism (p. 79): “Nationalism, by contrast [to patriotism], is an eruption of overweening ambition, a throwing off of individual and national self-control. Nationalism is self-absorbed and conceited, oblivious of the weaknesses of the country it champions…. Nationalism recognizes no authority higher than its own national passion. It imagines that it has a monopoly on right or has a mission superseding moral norms. The phrase ‘my country right or wrong’ sums up this attitude…. Nationalist politics is inherently intolerant, tyrannical, and expansionist. It bullies and creates ever new enemies.” It is in large part this ambitious, self-absorbed, intolerant, tyrannical, belligerent, expansionist, bullying nationalism, as best exemplified by so-called 'neo-conservatives' like William Kristol, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al., that led Ryn to write about what he calls the New Jacobinism.

This is something I intend to pay close attention to in my further readings on genuine conservatism: what is authentic conservatism's relationship to hyper-nationalism and just plain nationalism. Certainly Peter Viereck recognized the danger of what he called "thought-control nationalists." I believe that American nationalism, as aggressively represented by the pseudo-conservative American right, may well lead to the decline and fall of American civilization. I fear crazed nationalists like William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Dinesh D'Souza, William F. Buckley et. al. are leading us into a ditch out of which we may never emerge. I see this nationalistic fervor that considers America always the force for Good in the world that must use its power to dominate and control the rest of the world as perhaps the single most dangerous and suicidal trend in American life. To a large degree it is just this remarkably crazy nationalism that explains why pseudo-conservatives can't do foreign policy.

What Does ‘Conservative’ Really Mean?, Part 2

2007-01-03T17:16:00.000-05:00

As I said in Part 1 I wish to describe the basic themes and concerns of a genuine, authentic conservatism. My previous efforts at this have been too brief and sketchy. Perhaps some will be surprised to learn of the key tenets of genuine conservatism, especially if you've become used to the pseudo-conservative ideology successfully sold to Americans since the 1950s under the misappropriated terms ‘conservatism’ and ‘conservative.’ The primary concerns of modern political conservatism hark back to Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution first published in 1790; Burke is named by most as the father of modern, self-conscious conservatism. In this post I will present some of the views of Claes Ryn’s book, America the Virtuous.

As I stated in Part 1, perhaps the primary belief of conservatives is that human beings are possessed of base impulses and these need to be controlled if we are to have a civilized society. Such impulses include arrogance, pride, a desire for power over others, selfishness and self indulgence, belligerence, ruthlessness, etc. Conservatives see religion, morality and traditional social institutions as teaching and encouraging control of these baser motives. A morality emphasizing self-control is seen as essential to civilized life. In America the Virtuous Claes Ryn, whom I consider an authentic American conservative, wrote (p. 18) that Enlightenment writers like Rousseau, through a “denial of a darker side of human nature—what Christianity sometimes discusses in terms of ‘original sin’—undermined the ancient belief that checks, internal and external, must be placed on individual and collective action.” Much of modern conservatism is highly critical of the positive view of humans expressed during the Enlightenment and is especially critical of Rousseau. Ryn argued that the Founding Fathers who fashioned our representative, constitutional democracy were for the most part conservatives in this sense. “Constitutional democracy assumes a human nature divided between higher and lower potentialities and sees a need to guard against merely self-serving, imprudent, and even tyrannical impulses in the individual and the people as a whole (Ryn, p. 50).”

Ryn continued (p. 55): “In the West, the decentralized society is deeply rooted in Christian ideas of community and virtue, which are akin to earlier Greek ideas…. The individual’s primary moral responsibility is to make the best of self and to love neighbor. This is a demanding notion of virtue, for nothing is more difficult than overcoming one’s own selfishness and behaving charitably toward people of flesh and blood at close range.” Ryn is distinguishing the latter charity from an abstract commitment to the betterment of people who live at a great distance and are not experienced personally like ‘the downtrodden’, ‘mankind’, ‘the proletariat’, or ‘the poor.’ Ryn wrote that (p. 57): “the effect of the old morality of character is to build self-restraint and respect for others… and to reduce the danger of conflict. The emphasis on curbing arrogance, greed, and other types of self-indulgence increases the chances for harmonious relations.”

Frankly, it’s difficult for me to see how this premise of conservatism can be denied, i.e., the base impulses described definitely do exist and are strong in humans; civilization does require control of such impulses. Perhaps some might differ about precisely which institutions are best able to teach such self-control, but the need for it should not be controversial.

A second prime value of conservatism emphasizes the importance of concrete, local, face-to-face groups such as families, small groups, and local communities. Ryn wrote that (p. 52): "Constitutional democracy assumes a decentralized society in which the lives of most citizens are centered in small, chiefly private, and local associations, what the late Robert Nisbet called ‘autonomous groups.’ These can exercise independent authority. In the decentralized society there are many centers and levels of power. Political authority is widely dispersed, enabling regional and local entities to decide for themselves…. People tend to define their own interests not as discrete individuals but as members of the groups that they most treasure, starting with the family and other associations at close range. By the ‘people,’ then, constitutional democracy does not mean an undifferentiated mass of individuals….”

This is an important and possibly little known conservative tenet. In the 1950s there were a great number of social analyses published heralding the coming of a ‘mass society.’ This was a society where small, local, face-to-face relationships were eroded and replaced by centralized authority that was distant from and less influenced by individuals and their small, primary groups. As the natural authority of small, local, ‘autonomous groups’ was eroded, society was said to be “atomized” and individuals had fewer and fewer local ties with one another; they became more and more an undifferentiated mass. With the spread of urbanization and the consequent shrinkage of locality accompanying a less rural society it is hard to deny that this is true to some considerable extent. Usually such analyses (see Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community, first published in 1953) have emphasized the state as sucking up the powers of localities and creating the mass society. I suspect this is because in America it is relatively rare to read mainstream academics who are willing to criticize American industrialization leading to huge centralized corporations as a primary factor in creating atomized ‘mass’ individuals whose primary function is to consume in a self-indulgent fashion. My guess is the two primary motives to growth in the central government in America have been (1) the growth of huge corporations in the late 19th century requiring central government as a 'countervailing power' and (2) the huge increase in government due to a more and more massive 'defense' and 'security' presence (the latter probably due in significant part to the growth of American imperialism beginning in the late 19th century, see Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq).

Okay, this post is getting too long! I'll continue in Part 3.

Schumpeter on Imperialism, Part 2

2007-01-02T15:17:00.000-05:00

Here's another nice quote from Joseph Schumpeter cited by Claes Ryn's America the Virtuous (p. 11). Schumpeter cited Rome as

the classic example of that kind of insincerity in both foreign and domestic affairs which permeates not only avowed motives but also probably the conscious motives of the actors themselves--of that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism.

I believe Scumpeter wrote his essay on 'Imperialism' in 1919 so he wasn't writing on the basis of having observed post-World War II America. Schumpeter died in 1950.

On Confusion Concerning the Term 'Conservative'

2007-01-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

Claes Ryn's book, America the Virtuous, presents some interesting remarks on the contemporary American confusion surrounding the term 'conservative.' On pp. 193-4 we find:

A particularly striking example of intellectual bewilderment and helplessness are intellectuals who think of themselves as conservatives but who are unthinkingly embracing much of the heritage of the French Revolution. Another example are putative conservatives who assume that a conservative is someone who is more inclined than others to use military power or bullying against other countries.

Again on p. 210 Ryn wrote:

with regard to present political-intellectual discussion, some widely used terms have changed meaning. Some of them have become useless or, worse than useless, perniciously confusing or deceptive.... Much is not at all what it seems.

It is pseudo-conservatives like William F. Buckley who have confused and deceived us about the meaning of 'conservative.'

Ryn also wrote (p. 21):

Paradoxically, in the United States the new Jacobinism also finds expression among people called "conservatives" or "neoconservatives." This is a curious fact considering that modern, self-conscious conservatism originated in opposition to the ideas of the French Revolution. The person commonly regarded as the father of modern conservatism, the British statesman and thinker Edmund Burke (1729-97) focused his scorching critique of the French Revolution precisely on Jacobin thinking.

Schumpeter on Roman Imperialism, Does This Sound Familiar?

2007-01-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

In his book, America the Virtuous, Claes Ryn cited (p. 196) a great quote from Joseph Schumpeter's essay on Imperialism. Does this sound at all familiar? Try substituting 'America' for 'Rome' and 'American' for 'Roman'.

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest--why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people.

This is the kind of world presence the pseudo-conservative hawks, what Ryn calls the New Jacobins after the French Revolution's Jacobins, are convincing Americans to uphold. As Ryn wrote (p. 191):

Neo-Jacobinism is the main factor behind the quest for American world supremacy.... There are grounds for suspecting that, upon gaining a further hold on power, the new Jacobins will gravitate in the direction of more despotic methods. They are already employing systematic demonization and ostracism of their critics.... As the constraints of American constituitionalism continue to deteriorate, military or other emergencies will provide neo-Jacobin leaders widening opportunities for silencing their opponents as well as for imposing general restrictions on civil liberties.

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 1

2007-01-02T11:08:00.000-05:00

Obviously one cannot be dogmatic about what a particular political term means because there is always a certain amount of leeway that users of a language have in defining and redefining a word. Yet it is also true that users of a language do not have infinite leeway in redefining a term that has been in use for 200+ years, as has the term ‘conservativism.’ One typical manner of discovering the meaning in use of a term is by consulting a dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary or OED discovers an early use of the term conservatism in 1835. This makes sense because, although he apparently did not use the word, Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, gave definition to the term in his Reflections on the Revolution in France which was published in 1790.

As I have pointed out before, if one consults dictionaries to discover the meaning of ‘conservative’ we find the following definition in the OED:

Characterized by a tendency to preserve or keep intact or unchanged; preservative.
The maintenance of existing institutions political and ecclesiastical.
Characterized by caution or moderation.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines conservative as:

"PRESERVATIVE": tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions;
"TRADITIONAL": marked by moderation or caution; marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners".

Another way to discover the meaning in use of a term is to go back to a defining moment. The defining moment for the modern use of the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ was Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution in 1790. The Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Burke captures a flavor of Burke’s conservatism. His view

implies deep respect for the historical process and the usages and social achievements built up over time. Therefore, social change is not merely possible but also inevitable and desirable. But the scope and the role of thought operating as a reforming instrument on society as a whole is limited. It should act under the promptings of specific tensions or specific possibilities, in close union with the detailed process of change, rather than in large speculative schemes involving extensive interference with the stable, habitual life of society. Also, it ought not to place excessive emphasis on some ends at the expense of others; in particular, it should not give rein to a moral idealism (as in the French Revolution) that sets itself in radical opposition to the existing order.

Thus a look at dictionary definitions and the thought of the founding father of modern political conservatism yields these emphases: 1) a tendency to preserve or keep intact existing institutions; 2) respect for concrete ‘historical’ process, i.e., those specific institutions that have been evolved through past history; a respect for tradition; 3) social change must occur carefully and be designed with moderation and prudence; 4) social change should be activated by specific felt needs rather than ‘large speculative schemes’ for reordering society.

In addition to consulting dictionaries and examining defining moments, another way of discovering what ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ mean is by examining the writings of more recent authors who espouse similar views and hark back to writers like Burke as a model. Writers like this include Clinton Rossiter and his book, Conservatism in America, Peter Viereck and his book, Conservatism Revisited and Claes Ryn and his book, America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire.

Here I am going to focus upon some of the themes found in America the Virtuous (2003, Transaction Publishers) that define Claes Ryn as a genuine contemporary American conservative.

One theme of authentic conservatism is expressed in this quote from Burke: "All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities."

Conservatives recognize that humans are possessed of evil impulses that need to be controlled; they would emphasize the human propensity to selfishness, pride, a will to power, ruthlessness, willfulness, self-indulgence, arrogance and belligerence, as examples of the evil human impulses that require control. Control takes place through an ethical emphasis upon self-control as well as the restraints of traditional moral doctrines and institutions (Ryn, p 3). It is the recognition of these potentialities for evil that made conservatives recommend prudent, moderate social change and mistrust the ‘large speculative schemes’ of human reason that could so easily be a cloak for private ambition and will to power. It is not clear how one can deny this conservative observation; human impulses to power, self interest and self indulgence, ruthlessness, arrogance, pride and belligerence are difficult to deny.

[I will continue this catalog of conservative themes in future posts.]

Why Posts on Individual Freedom?

2006-12-30T12:27:00.000-05:00

I have been posting on individual freedom, individualism, etc., because this is a basic value upon which virtually all Americans from left to right agree, at least as an abstract principle. It is only when one looks into the details of political opinions that one finds that 'individual freedom' in the abstract does not translate into the same concrete set of political and social recommendations. For example, it seems to me that if one truly values individual freedom then one must endorse a pretty strong policy of civil liberties as defined in the bill of rights. In the abstract pseudo-conservatives like William F. Buckley endorse civil liberties; however, in God and Man at Yale he advocated an end to academic freedom as we know it and endorsed a policy of indoctrination for undergraduates in the 'truths' of morality and political economy as he viewed them as a Catholic and an Adam Smith lover (see documentation of this in John Judis' biography of Buckley). Moreover, Buckley's support for McCarthy and McCarthyism also demonstrated his lack of a robust view of civil liberties. Indeed, Buckley's views regarding both academic freedom and McCarthyism demonstrated that he does not at all support the free exchange of ideas in freedom of speech when it comes to matters where he believes his views are 'right', and thus indoctrination is the policy he supports in many cases. I'm not sure how this differentiates him from Stalinists who also endorsed indoctrination of the 'party line.'

Americanism Stresses Individual Freedom

2006-12-28T21:44:00.000-05:00

I've been reading some of the writing of C.B. Macpherson a Canadian political theorist. He is a very clear and logical writer and a pleasure to read. In 1962 he published a book called The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. As so many writers do, he saw an emphasis upon individual freedom as central to Western liberal thought. However, he saw two different concepts of individualism: 1) where the individual wishes to be free to pursue satisfaction of needs, utility; 2) where individual freedom is seen as central because it allows the individual to develop and express all his human capacities to the fullest extent he desires. The first notion seems to characterize the nature of America and its emphasis upon consuming. The second is a broader and fuller notion of individual freedom allowing the individual to pursue whatever talents he possesses for any goals he chooses. However, the latter notion also requires that the individual have access to the means of development and expression and, although there is much lip service paid to "equality of opportunity" in America, an honest look shows that true equality of opportunity or anything approaching it does not exist because some of our citizens begin life with many resources while others begin life with little but the bear necessities. "Equality of opportunity" is a myth unless all Americans start out with at least a solid beginning and have available to them the resources necessary to developing themselves through education or other such endeavors.

Whenever equality comes up right-wingers immediately erect the straw man of differences in biologically based characteristics to argue that complete equality is not possible. Most people are fully aware that 'complete equality', whatever that might mean, is not possible and do not advocate any such foolishness. However, 'equality of opportunity' is quite another matter and to be meaningful would have to accord basic resources and opportunities for developing one's human potential.

How a Genuine Conservative Differed From Pseudo-Conservatives

2006-12-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

I continue here about Peter Viereck whom I've previously posted about here, here, and here. In Conservatism Revisited (Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1962, Collier Books, pp. 149-51) Viereck commented on how he thought true conservatism differed from the William F. Buckleys of the 1950s. Speaking of Russell Kirk, Buckley and the rest of their 'new conservative' group he wrote in 1962 about

that whole inconsistent spectrum of Goldwater intellectuals and right-radical magazines. Most of them are so muddled they don't even know when they are being 19th-century liberal individualists (in economics) and when they are being 20th-century semi-fascist thought-controllers (in politics). Logically, these two qualities are contradictory. Psychologically, they unite to make America's typical pseudo-conservative rightist.... [Kirk] and perhaps half of the new conservatives are bankrupt.... How can one attribute bankruptcy to a growing concern? Indeed, this new American right seems a very successful concern. On every TV station, on every mass-circulation editorial page, the word 'conservatism' in the 1960's has acquired a fame, or at least notoriety, that it never possessed before.... Which is it, triumph or bankruptcy, when the empty shell of a name gets acclaim while serving as a chrysalis for its opposite? The historic content of conservatism stands, above all, for two things: organic unity and rooted liberty. Today the shell of the 'conservative' label has become a chrysalis for the opposite of these two things: at best for atomistic Manchester liberalism, opposite of organic unity; at worst for thought-controlling nationalism, uprooting the traditional liberties (including the 5th Amendment) planted by America's founders.

These are points I have made myself: what I've called the 'witch's brew' of pseudo-conservative beliefs are in fact anti-conservative and mutually self-contradictory; the Buckleyites were simply successful in packaging this mess of contradictions and branding it as "conservatism."

Read Jay Rosen on Bush's "Retreat from Empiricism"

2006-12-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

Jay Rosen has written a very thoughtful and important article about how little respect for 'reality' or facts the Bush administration has; they are about manipulating the beliefs of the press and public and otherwise 'reality' can take a back seat. As Stephen Colbert insists "truthiness" is what counts:

the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.

Or, if you prefer, 'reality is just a crutch.'

The Path Not Taken: Viereck’s Humane Conservatism

2006-12-22T15:45:00.000-05:00

Reading Peter Viereck’s writings on conservatism from 1949 to 1962 I am painfully aware of what a marvelous possibility was entirely lost and instead replaced by a vicious, hate-filled, righteous, right-wing radicalism that is for the most part simply a disguised advocacy for the reigning business class. Viereck is so unusual he is hard to believe, particularly in the politically divisive atmosphere largely created by right-wing radicalism since the late 1970s (yes, I know it’s virtually obligatory to blame the current poisonous political atmosphere equally upon Democrats and Republicans but this is nonsense; just compare the prominence and effectiveness of the viciousness of the right in dealing with a relatively good president, Clinton, with the relative passivity and respectfulness accorded a singularly bad president, George W. Bush).

Viereck is someone you have to read to believe because he is such an unusual American political animal. He defines conservatism, as do most dictionaries, as a reverence and respect for the traditions, customs and practices of one’s own country or locality. This recognizes that in some part conservatism is relativistic; it is not simply a specific set of socio-political beliefs, like liberalism or socialism, but a tendency to support whatever has been best in the slow organic development of one’s own society. (Viereck as a Western Christian conservative does emphasize the ‘freedom’ of the individual, so his conservatism is not completely relativistic.) But to give a flavor for what is relativistic in his American conservatism here are a few quotes (from Conservatism Revisited, Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1962, Collier Books, pp. 125-143:

…romanticizing conservatives refuse to face up to the old and solid historical roots of most or much American liberalism…. In contrast, a genuinely rooted, history-minded conservative conserves the roots that are really there, exactly as Burke did…. American history is based on the resemblance between moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism…. The Burkean builds on the concrete existing historical base, not on a vacuum of abstract wishful thinking. When, as in America, that concrete base includes British liberalism of the 1680’s and New Deal reforms of the 1930’s, then the real American conserver assimilates into conservatism whatever he finds lasting and good in liberalism and in the New Deal…. [I]n America it is often the free trade unions who unconsciously are our ablest representatives of the word they hate and misunderstand: conservatism. The organic unity they restore to the atomized ‘proletariat’ is… providential…. So we come full circle in America’s political paradox; our conservatism, in the absence of medieval feudal relics, must grudgingly admit it has little real tradition to conserve except that of liberalism—which then turns out to be a relatively conservative liberalism.(last emphasis added)

So a real American conservative accepts our liberal tradition including some New Deal reforms and sees the conservative benefits of trade unions. Of course right-wing apologists for the business class like William F. Buckley would repackage 'conservatism' with their own contradictory set of beliefs and successfully sell this to the American public as 'conservative'. In a later post I'll quote some of Viereck's choicest descriptions of the Buckleyites' pseudo-conservatism; but here's one to whet your appetite: "right-wing nationalist thought control."

Shoe on the Other Foot Department?

2006-12-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

This just in from Bill Christensen of Technovelgy.com: Joe Scarborough, one of the 268 Representatives who voted to begin impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, has apparently finally noticed the disparity between Clinton's record and Bush's.

Scarborough quoted:

Well, this is uncharted territory. And Josh Green, I want you,
if you will, to imagine, how would Republicans have responded if
President Bill Clinton had ignored the advice of all of his Joint
Chiefs, his top general in the war zone, his former secretary of
state, and 80 percent of Americans? Is it not a stretch to say that many Republicans would have considered impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton if this situation were identical?

This is something I wonder about constantly; imagine what the Republicans--who crucified Bill Clinton for firing some White House Staff or getting a blowjob and lying about it or losing $200,000 in a land deal BEFORE he was President--would do if Clinton had done one of a zillion things George W. Bush has done (usually with virtual impunity). You'd have been able to hear them screaming in Timbuktu!

Peter Viereck, A True Conservative

2006-12-21T08:55:00.000-05:00

I'm discovering more about Peter Viereck, who died May 13 of this year at 89 and was an authentic American voice of conservatism. Viereck, to our great misfortune, was shouted down in the 1950s by the hateful, extremist rhetoric of William F. Buckley and his band of right-wing radicals. Viereck published the first book of the New Conservatism in 1949, Conservatism Revisited.

In a 1962 preface to a reissue of Conservatism Revisited Viereck wrote of himself and Clinton Rossiter (author of Conservatism in America):

we broke with the majority of current self-styled American conservatives (pseudo-conservative radicals of the right, in our view) over... issues of nationalist thought-control. The same pseudo-conservative rightists who discriminate against Negroes, despise the groping new governments of Asia and Africa, and stir up authoritarian nationalism against U.N. internationalism, these same thought-control rightists are also avowed disciples of Burke.... But Burke held a freedom-loving central position... [he] fought against the Negro slave trade and against imperialist oppression of India.

Viereck's mention of "pseudo-conservative rightists who discriminate against Negroes" is a reference to the probably no longer remembered fact that William F. Buckley wrote consistently in favor of a states' rights defense against racial integration. In the August 24, 1957 National Review Buckley wrote (John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., 1988, pp. 138-9):

The central question that emerges...is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is Yes--the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race....

Viereck's charges of 'thought-control nationalism' (McCarthyism) and 'authoritarian nationalism against U.N. internationalism' hit the bullseye; it is these baneful influences, aggressively fostored by the radical right, which have too much dominated U.S. political discourse since World War II and have unerringly led us to the 'thought-control nationalism' of the George W. Bush administration. Oh how much better off we would have been had the saner beliefs of Peter Viereck prevailed.

John Judis' Buckley Biography

2006-12-19T09:24:00.000-05:00

In 1988 John Judis published a biography of William F. Buckley. In reading it I am reminded of why I dislike this man. He was brought up in the lap of privilege, by a father who was a European-style Catholic defender of any Catholic-dominated status-quo and who saw almost any more democratic challenge as the march of Communism. His father defended the Mexican dictator Diaz against even bourgeois revolutionaries and was more opposed to Communism and Russia than he was to Hitler and Nazi Germany. Both father and son opposed U.S. entry into World War II until we were attacked by the Japanese. The father saw himself as a counter-revolutionary and Jr. has really been a counter-revolutionary all of his life, though the 'revolution' against which Jr. has fought was the New Deal. Jr. is from childhood described as a haughty, aristocratic, product of privilege, who was very much in his father's image. Buckley Sr. and Jr. would have been far more happy to live under a Catholic monarchy where they were members of the nobility and kept the 'rabble' in their place. Any support for democratic civil liberties on Buckley's part would be secondary to his predilection for a preferred authority's rule over all; thus, his defense of fellow Catholic anti-Communist Joseph McCarthy and his seeming less concerned about Nazisim. I don't see any reason to see William F. Buckley, Jr. as a defender of individual freedom.

Remember When America's Biggest Worry Was Fellatio?

2006-12-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

So the press wanted to elect the guy they'd rather have a beer with, eh? Well you've got him and you've had him for six years. Had enough yet? Bill Clinton had a few very circumspect foreign initiatives in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo; in none of them were we bogged down in some horrendous mess.

What exactly are the 'accomplishments' of the Bush administration? A Medicare Drug Benefit which is so expensive that the guy who was going to tell us how much it cost had to be threatened so he'd shut up. A benefit which truly seems to be more for the drug companies and insurance companies offering the benefit than for seniors. A Katrina emergency effort that finally convinced the American people that this administration is truly incompetent. Massive tax cuts that pissed away surpluses that Bill Clinton wanted to use to "Fix Social Security First" and saddled our kids and grandkids with a huge federal debt. If you thought 'Tax and Spend' was bad you didn't really compare it to 'Borrow and Spend'.

And a war in Iraq that threatens to be worse for America than the war in Vietnam. Costs heading toward $1 trillion, deaths of American kids heading toward 3000 (plus tens of thousands of kids injured), Iraqi deaths of between 400 and 900 thousand, a horrible black eye for American prestige around the world, another quagmire that we can't get out of because our leaders can't contemplate 'defeat' (John McCain) or 'failure', etc.

What else do you need to know to realize that these crazy pseudo-conservatives can't govern? Remember the nearly constant fuss pseudo-conservatives were making about Bill Clinton? How he had to be impeached for fibbing about fellatio? Ah, now those were the good old days.

Individual Freedom and Individualism

2006-12-17T11:59:00.000-05:00

In 1922, after World War I and the Russian Revolution, Herbert Hoover, then President Warren Harding's Secretary of Commerce, wrote a small book called American Individualism. In many ways the book was similar to other statements of American individualism; it stated

that each individual shall be given the chance and stimulation for development of the best with which he has been endowed in heart and mind; it is the sole source of progress; it is American individualism.

Hoover was a very intelligent and decent fellow who was certainly the best of the three Republican presidents leading up to the Great Depression, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Harding is frequently considered one of our worst presidents and Coolidge, in my opinion, was thoroughly mediocre. It was probably Hoover's bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the stock market crash and the Great Depression hit.

Hoover emphasized equality of opportunity as essential to American individualism but it is not clear to me that he fully appreciated how large corporations and their attendant concentration of wealth and power placed significant limits on equality of opportunity.

An interesting case history of Hoover's actual implementation of his beliefs can be seen in his control over radio broadcasting as Secretary of Commerce (see Robert W. McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 1993, Chapter 2). Radio broadcasting was in its infancy during the Twenties and had an extremely critical role to play in the informing and education of American citizens. In the early Twenties there was a great deal of competition and local influence over radio broadcasting which could have been fostered by Hoover and those under him. These decisions about radio would of course determine what would later happen to television. Hoover's decisions facilitated the eventual domination of radio by large broadcasting networks who depended for revenue on advertising and drove out the small local operators who were dominant before 1927. As McChesney wrote:

There was little sense prior to 1927... that private control meant broadcasting should be dominated by networks, guided solely by the profit motive, and supported by advertising revenues.

It is difficult to exaggerate the influence Hoover's radio policies would have over the quality of information, education and debate within the American polity. If you have difficulty with the pap fed you on TV and radio today and are sick of the greater and greater amount of time filled by mindless advertising, you have no one more important to thank than that great 'individualist', Herbert Hoover.

While philosophically saying many of the right things about competition and individual initiative, Hoover's policies centralized radio's control in the hands of a few network corporations, resulted in the radio waves being dominated solely by advertising for profit, and drove most of the small radio operators out of business. It's not clear to me what the use is of being for 'equality of opportunity' in the abstract while making concrete decisions that limit competition and opportunity in one of the most important arenas of life to a democracy, the provision of information, 'news' and public affairs communications to all of the democratic public.

Last year's film "Good Night and Good Luck" made clear with one example the results of these decisions in the Twenties. Even though Edward R. Murrow was the most highly respected radio and TV journalist of his times, and though his criticism of Senator Joseph McCarthy turned out to be principled and correct, and though CBS head William S. Paley was a friend of Murrow's--Paley still slowly edged Murrow out of CBS TV news programs because the criticism of McCarthy was controversial and upset some CBS advertising sponsors. The bottom line: TV news and public affairs programming could not afford to be 'controversial' in ways that might upset sponsors. How can the voting citizens of America's democracy be informed on the crucial issues of the day when the advertising revenues of sponsors has a determining effect upon the 'information' they hear?

Between the 1960s and today our major 'news' networks have decided that they no longer even have a responsibility to cover political conventions and political speeches because it's more important to their advertisers that they provide 'entertainment' instead. Thank you Herbert Hoover.

Is Central Government a Neutral Arbiter?

2006-12-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post I raised the question of what a commitment to 'individual freedom' means if the state is not a neutral arbiter, that is, if it does take sides and does not simply ensure the framework within which individuals pursue their individually defined goals. I'm reading a book by historian Leonard Richards called Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle; it certainly contributes an answer to the question of the neutrality of the Massachussets State government in the 1780s. Richards discovered a list of 4000 signatures of those involved in Shays's rebellion and thus was able to do research on the actual social composition of the rebels; previously no one had gone to the trouble of deciphering the handwriting and doing this research. The book was published in 2002, two hundred fifteen years after the rebellion.

Richards' research makes it clear who the rebels were, what their motives were and how they managed to attract so many followers. The book makes it clear that the Massachussets legislature at this time was dominated by Boston merchants and speculators and their privileged allies. After the passage of a new constitution written primarily by that love object of 'conservatives', John Adams (who probably does qualify as a genuine conservative), the legislature passed laws ensuring that all the notes of indebtedness of Massahchussets would be redeemed at face value and interest would be paid. While many of these notes were issued as 'pay' to Revolutionary War soldiers they had never been redeemed and thus many if not most of the soldiers sold these notes to buy necessities for themselves and their families; the primary purchasers of the notes were more well off Boston speculators who could afford to buy them at 10-25% of their face value and wait or trade them in the Boston securities market. When the legislature, representing the interests of these Boston merchants and speculators, passed legislation redeeming these notes at a cost to state government about twice as high as any other state, the state had to figure out how to pay for this. Thus, they sharply raised taxes which regressively fell unequally onto the farmers of the backcountry of Western Massachussets. Thus, while many of the ordinary soldiers who fought in the war received relatively worthless notes as pay and were forced to sell these to speculators, these same soldiers were going to have pay a heavy burden of taxes to redeem these notes with interest so the speculators could profit. Moreover, the notes were not accepted as payments of taxes, the latter had to paid with hard money which was scarce and difficult to acquire.

These were the primary reasons that back country Western Massachussets farmers and their allies took up arms against the state government. Richards also makes it clear that the rebellion was a major motivator for the 'great men' of the Constitutional convention to get together and write our national Constitution. Most of the 'founding fathers' were relatively wealthy property holders who were made afraid by Shays's Rebellion and wanted, among other things, to be able to have a national government which could easily raise an army to put down popular rebellions. Indeed, that is precisely what President Washington did in 1794 when he amassed 13,000 troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.

Does it really further the freedom and dignity of the individual to support a state if that state is not a neutral arbiter?

Who Is the Most Genuine Advocate of Individual Freedom in Today’s America?

2006-12-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

Individualism, meaning valuing the freedom of the individual to develop to the fullest of his/her own potential and ensuring that the individual can enjoy the full benefits of these efforts, is at the heart of the American belief system. Classical liberals like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek embrace these values. The so-called American ‘conservative’ movement begun in the 1950s also claims to see individual freedom as central to its values. Interestingly, a case can be made that much of what has passed for American radicalism also is based upon belief in the promotion of individual freedom and development. Finally, ‘modern’ liberals too found their belief system upon the bedrock of individual freedom and development.

Obviously there must be important matters upon which these otherwise very different groups disagree. The most fundamental point of disagreement involves very different views of the role of the American state. Perhaps in an ideal world these different groups could agree that the state would play the minimalist role assigned to it by writers like Adam Smith. However, disagreement enters in assessing the historical actions that the American state has actually taken and whether this role fundamentally violated the ideal of laissez faire by repeatedly favoring those with more economic power enabling them to amass undue wealth and power. If one believes the latter then advocacy of laissez faire and opposition to government intervention in the economy at this late date only helps to consolidate the inequalities of wealth, power, and opportunity that exist today and thereby stands to undermine the freedom of the majority of contemporary individuals to develop themselves to their fullest potential and enjoy the fruits of these individual exertions.

While pseudo-conservatives like William Buckley and classical liberals like Friedman and Hayek inveigh against the state as the sole threat to individual freedom they completely overlook the massive growth of large corporations as agglomerations of power that can threaten individual liberty. They also apparently overlook the fact that the state has again and again done things to favor centralization of wealth and power in the hands of the American business class. These potential contradictions of laissez faire and threats to the freedom of all individuals do not seem to concern them. (To be fair to Friedman he often has attempted to be consistent by opposing at least some actions of government that favor business or professional classes.)

The contemporary call for minimal government by pseudo-conservatives and classical liberals and their virtually sole emphasis on the threats to individual freedom from the state are conveniently similar to the ideology of privileged classes in the U.S. In other words, modern liberals believe that these individuals’ ideology is not a true defense of individual freedom but a disguised defense of privilege and serve to undermine the freedom of less privileged individuals. This is where the real disagreements lie. The question is: who really is the most genuine advocate of individual freedom in today’s America?

Modern liberals and some individual freedom-loving radicals would argue that when pseudo-conservatives and classical liberals cast the state as virtually the only threat to individual freedom they are overlooking the fact that, unlike large corporations, the state is to some degree responsive to the individual through the vehicle of bi-annual elections. As Charles Perrow has written (Organizing America, p. 8):

Most important for government, however, is the check of democratic control on governmental masters through the electorate. The check is limited, imperfect, and subject to abuse, but there is no democratic control at all in the case of private economic organizations, on which most of us depend for our living. Only governmental regulation can attempt to control private economic organizations. Because governmental organizations are somewhat more responsive to the electorate in democracies, I fear large governmental organizations less than large private ones.

Apologists for corporations might argue that there are checks on corporate power: 1) votes of shareholders to elect boards of directors and 2) votes of consumers in the marketplace. These are specious arguments because any honest study of corporate governance would note that it is the unelected top managers of the corporation that control them; directors are nominated by top management and almost always rubber stamped by shareholders; moreover, directors exercise little significant power over top management. Votes of consumers in the marketplace are utterly different than votes in a democratic election; in the latter case one election can put candidates in office or remove them on a single day and such elections occur regularly at two, four or six year intervals; the purchases of consumers may take much time to have an effect on management, if any, and they do not directly involve anything other than the details of what products are produced and how; if consumers disagree with the political or charitable contributions of management or the company's environmental policy purchase of products is no substitute for democratic elections.

Mark Danner Article a 'Must Read'

2006-12-12T11:32:00.000-05:00

Mark Danner has written an excellent article for The New York Review of Books on the decision-making background to the Iraq War. The article starts slowly but gets to some real meat in Part 4 and 5.

Anyone wanting to answer the question of "how we began" in Iraq has to confront the monumental fact that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, invaded Iraq with no particular and specific idea of what it was going to do there, and then must try to explain how this could have happened.

This is indeed the question I have asked myself again and again, how could we have gone into this without a postwar plan? I have often been most tempted to blame Rumsfeld because he was given so much control over the whole effort, war and postwar. However, Danner writes:

Irresistible as Rumsfeld is, however, the story of the Iraq war disaster springs less from his brow than from that of an inexperienced and rigidly self-assured president who managed to fashion, with the help of a powerful vice-president, a strikingly disfigured process of governing.... Ron Suskind, who has been closely studying the inner workings of the Bush administration since his revealing piece about Karl Rove and John Dilulio in 2003 and his book on Paul O'Neill the following year, observes that "the interagency" not only serves to convey information and decisions but also is intended to perform a more basic function: "Sober due diligence, with an eye for the way previous administrations have thought through a standard array of challenges facing the United States, creates, in fact, a kind of check on executive power and prerogative." This is precisely what the President didn't want, particularly after September 11; deeply distrustful of the bureaucracy, desirous of quick, decisive action, impatient with bureaucrats and policy intellectuals, the President wanted to act....

Suskind... argues that Bush and Cheney constructed precisely the government they wanted: centralized, highly secretive, its clean, direct lines of decision unencumbered by information or consultation. "There was never any policy process to break, by Condi or anyone else," Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, remarks to Suskind. "There was never one from the start. Bush didn't want one, for whatever reason."

To me this has the ring of truth. During the 2000 election the press was thoroughly preoccupied with 'who you'd rather have a beer with', Bush or Gore. Well, we got the guy the press would rather have a beer with and we got a singularly incompetent president who will likely go down in history as close to our worst. I really suspect Bush has immeasurably increased the 'decline' of America as a 'Great Power'. Read Danner's article, there's a lot more. This article focuses upon what I think are the key questions in understanding the Iraq War: 1) why was there no postwar plan? 2) who decided to order de-baathification and disband the Iraqi military and why? The article provides some of the best thinking I've seen on these key questions.

Pseudo-Conservatism Unmasked as Early as 1951

2006-12-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

In a marvelous review of William F. Buckley’s 1950 book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' (New York Times, November 4, 1951), Peter Viereck, a true conservative, early espied Buckley’s central contradictions. Complimenting Buckley’s insistence that “man has a moral nature”, “that freedom depends on the traditional value-code of the West and that unmoral materialism results in a suicidal intolerance debunking all values as equally ‘relative’", nonetheless Viereck found much to criticize:

Yet what is his alternative? Nothing more inspiring than the most sterile Old Guard brand of Republicanism, far to the right of Taft. Is there no ‘selfish materialism’ at all among the National Association of Manufacturers as well as among the ‘New Deal collectivists’ here denounced?

Only a true conservative with the integrity of self-criticism and the desire to advocate a consistent set of principles could ask that question—and William F. Buckley, “this product of narrow economic privilege” as appropriately described by Viereck—certainly did not, and to this day does not, satisfy those criteria. (See my William F. Buckley's Courageous Fight for Principle--NOT.)

Buckley raised concerns about excessive ‘materialism’ but only the alleged materialism of “New Deal collectivists” while conveniently ignoring the primary source of American materialism, the consumerism of those like the National Association of Manufacturers. In other words, Buckley takes arguments often dear to American conservatives (e.g., importance of traditional morality, anti-materialism, individual freedom) but transforms them to suit his own ideological prejudices and utterly ignores the blatant contradictions underlying his own tortured usage of ‘conservative’ positions. Buckley, from the beginning really had no principles, he merely cunningly used what he alleged were positions of principle to advocate for a group of interests to which he personally subscribed. Viereck: “[T]he author irresponsibly treats not only mild social democracy but even most social reform as almost crypto-communism. He damns communism, our main enemy, not half so violently as lesser enemies like the income tax and inheritance tax.” Buckley, like his oil baron father, was avidly pro-capitalist and out to protect in every possible manner the prerogatives and privileges of businesspeople who had benefited from American capitalism—thus the attacks upon the income and inheritance taxes (and today's pseudo-conservative attacks on the 'death tax'). He was ferociously anti-New Deal and wished to tear down its edifices and engaged in typical right-wing Cold War hyperbole identifying not only “mild social democracy but even most social reform as almost crypto-communism.”

Buckley posed as a great champion of individual freedom but when it suited his ideological agenda he quietly switched to authoritarian thought control to ‘banish from the classroom’ those ideas he deemed heretical. Viereck: “Words will really fail you when you reach the book’s final ‘message’: [Yale]trustees and alumni should violate the legally established academic freedom to ‘banish from the classroom’ not merely Communists but all professors deviating far from Adam Smith!”

Viereck: “And why is this veritable Eagle Scout of moral sternness silent on the moral implications of McCarthyism in his own camp?” Buckley was a rabid anti-communist willing to blink at the attacks upon civil liberties of those such as Senator Joseph McCarthy. On the one hand he’s against communism for its attacks upon Western freedoms, on the other he undermines these freedoms in the very battle to save them. As the writers of The Authoritarian Personality wrote: “The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions.., consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”

Viereck went on to identify more fatal contradictions: “Is it not humorless, or else blasphemous, for this eloquent advocate of Christianity, an unworldly and anti-economic religion, to enshrine jointly as equally sacrosanct: ‘Adam Smith and Ricardo, Jesus and St. Paul?’” This is a contradiction too infrequently noted: Christianity as preached by Christ is not compatible with the secular worship of the pursuit of wealth, though the 'protestant ethic' may have been twisted to fit 'the spirit of capitalism'.

Viereck, an excellent writer, concluded: “Not for economic privilege but for ethical and anti-materialist reasons, some of us have preached a conservative ‘revolt against revolt.’ If the laboring mountain of the new campus conservatism can turn out no humane and imaginative Churchill but merely this product of narrow economic privilege, then we might need a revolt against the revolt against revolt.”

Many of Peter Viereck's books are still available. For an evaluation of Viereck's conservative credentials see George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, (1996, p. 60): "[Conservatism Revisited, Viereck's 1949 book] was the book which, more than any other of the postwar era, created the new conservatism as a self-conscious intellectual force." If that was so, Viereck certainly disagreed with Buckley's 'conservatism', as published only a year later.

What True Conservatism Would Dictate in Foreign Policy

2006-12-09T11:12:00.000-05:00

Two posts ago, in A Cogent View of Why Iraq Is So Divided I wrote:

How much evidence do our policymakers need that intervening in a foreign culture is an extremely difficult thing to do with any success; there are just too many unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes.

Any truly conservative government could never have lost sight of this idea. John Adams is almost universally celebrated as one of America's most distinguished conservatives and he fully understood this. Writing about taking the step of declaring independence from England he wrote:

All great Changes are irksome to the human Mind, especially those which are attended with great Dangers and uncertain Effects. No Man living can foresee the Consequences of such a Measure [independence], and therefore I think it ought not to have been undertaken until the Design of Providence by a Series of great Events had so plainly marked out the Necessity of it that he who runs might read (quoted in Y. Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, 1964, p. 70).

But the radical pseudo-conservative government of George W. Bush of course showed no such caution, patience or acute understanding of the difficulties of their Iraq adventure; Bush, opposite to his father in 1990, rammed his war resolution through Congress less than one month prior to a Congressional election and couldn't have seemed more anxious to invade Iraq and turn it into a "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East. How absolutely opposite of conservative do radical rightists like Bush have to be before Americans recognize the con game being run on them when these radicals cloth themselves in the garments of 'conservatism?'

Bush Considering Three Iraq Strategies

2006-12-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reported that the Bush administration is rushing to come up with their own Iraq strategy, i.e., NOT the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, for a speech by Bush before Xmas:

The major alternatives include a short-term surge of 15,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces. Another strategy would redirect the U.S. military away from the internal strife to focus mainly on hunting terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda. And the third would concentrate political attention on supporting the majority Shiites and abandon U.S. efforts to reach out to Sunni insurgents.

I'll bet they choose option 1 because it is the closest thing to 'Stay the course'. They'll boost troops in Baghdad, say its a 'new' strategy and buy more time to try to pull off a 'victory'. Unless the Congress is VERY watchful this 'new' approach could drag on for another year before national discouragement sets in again and we are currently rapidly approaching 3000 American troops dead. As the WaPo said:

While one of the options involves a surge of U.S. troops, there is no agreement on what the mission of those forces would be, sources say. Discussions center on accelerating the training of Iraqi forces and helping secure Baghdad before turning it over to the Iraqis. The goal generally could be to improve Iraq's defense capabilities so U.S. combat troops could begin to withdraw faster.

But of course the usual 'blame the victims' strategy is being used too:

But the growing undercurrent of discussions within the administration is shifting responsibility for Iraq's problems to Iraqis. Sources familiar with the deliberations describe fatigue, frustration and a growing desire to disengage from Iraq. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.

Option 2:

The second idea is the "al-Qaeda option," which would transform the U.S. mission to focus on fighting terrorism and would disengage forces from domestic aspects of the multisided conflict. U.S. troops would take a backseat on the Shiite-Sunni conflict and instead hunt down al-Qaeda operatives, the sources say. On the ground, for example, that could mean a shift away from operations in Baghdad's volatile Sadr City slum, or from efforts to stop car bombs and sectarian attacks. The administration is increasingly resigned to the fact that it can neither prevent nor intervene in Iraq's sectarian war, which has begun to supersede both the Sunni insurgency and al-Qaeda's operations, the sources say.

Option 3:

On the political front, the administration is focusing increasingly on variations of a "Shiite tilt," sometimes called an "80 percent solution," that would bolster the political center of Iraq and effectively leave in charge the Shiite and Kurdish parties that account for 80 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and that won elections a year ago. Vice President Cheney's office has most vigorously argued for the "80 percent solution," in terms of both realities on the ground and the history of U.S. engagement with the Shiites, sources say. A source familiar with the discussions said Cheney argued this week that the United States could not again be seen to abandon the Shiites, Iraq's largest population group, after calling in 1991 for them to rise up against then-President Saddam Hussein and then failing to support them when they did. Thousands were killed in a huge crackdown.

Does Cheney or anyone else realize that this option simply increases Iran's influence and alienates our Sunni allies in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? I guess it's foolish to expect rationality from Cheney. See my previous posts on this tilt to the Shia, e.g., Tilting Toward SOME of the Shia.

A Cogent View of Why Iraq Is So Divided

2006-12-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

Laura Rozen cited some writing from Anthony Cordesman that is, I think, quite accurate:

the Iraqi government is weak as much because of US action as Iraq's inherent problems. The US destroyed the secular core of the country by disbanding the Ba'ath. The US created a constitutional process long before Iraq was ready, and created an intensely divisive document with more than 50 key areas of "clarification" including federation, control of oil resources and money, control of security, the role of religion, the nature of the legal system, etc. The US created an electoral system that almost forced Iraqis to vote to be Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds and divided the nation on sectoral and ethnic lines.

I believe this is somewhat overlooked: the US actually inadvertently exacerbated the sectarian strife in Iraq by decisions it made regarding the political process in Iraq. Thus the Bush administration didn't simply bungle the post-war but it positively contributed to the problems that are rending Iraq today. How much evidence do our policymakers need that intervening in a foreign culture is an extremely difficult thing to do with any success; there are just too many unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes.

A Fatal Catch-22 in Iraq?

2006-12-07T12:55:00.000-05:00

Michael Gordon of the New York Times underlined what may be the Iraq Study Group’s primary recommendation:

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has struggled in vain to tamp down the violence in Iraq and to build up the capacity of Iraq’s security forces. Now the study group is positing that the United States can accomplish in little more than one year what it has failed to carry out in three. In essence, the study group is projecting that a rapid infusion of American military trainers will so improve the Iraqi security forces that virtually all of the American combat brigades may be withdrawn by the early part of 2008 [emphasis added].

This strategy may involve a fatal Catch-22:

Catch-22 is a term, coined by Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, describing a general situation in which an individual has to accomplish two actions which are mutually dependent on the other action being completed first…. In moving from school to a career, one may encounter a Catch-22 where one cannot get a job without work experience, but one cannot gain experience without a job.

Michael Gordon of the NYT continued:

In June, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, developed a plan that called for gradually drawing down the number of American brigade combat teams by December 2007, to just 5 or 6 from the 14 combat brigades that were deployed at the time. In keeping with this approach, American troops in Baghdad began to cut back on their patrols in the capital, calculating that Iraqi security forces would pick up the slack. But no sooner did General Casey present his plan in Washington than it had to be deferred. With sectarian violence soaring in Baghdad, the United States reinforced its troops there. More American soldiers are now involved in security operations in Baghdad than Iraqi troops… since it is American forces that have often worked to curb the sectarian killings — and since many of the Iraqi forces have been infiltrated by sectarian militias — there is reason to believe that the civil strife will grow if the American combat forces soon begin to leave [emphasis added].

In one of Juan Cole’s reports we find this:

via satellite from Washington David Newton, a former US ambassador to Iraq… says that the US training of Iraqi soldiers to assume security command in Iraq will be useless if these soldiers "continue to behave on behalf of one side or another" after they finish their training [emphasis added].

Finally, Spencer Ackerman, in an American Prospect article wrote:

The bottom line, the commission says rather aptly, is "there are many armed groups within Iraq, and very little will to lay down arms”…. The commission is right about this. Where it goes wrong is in its recommendation that we should be actively supporting an Iraqi political process that is hostage to such dysfunction and sectarian chaos… it's because of this very deeply felt sectarian distrust that the training of Iraqi security forces has only served to equip and prepare more and more combatants for the civil war [emphasis added].

So here’s the Catch-22: we need to beef up our efforts to train Iraqi Security Forces so they can police and control sectarian violence in Iraq; but, to a significant degree, training these forces serves to equip and prepare more and more combatants in the sectarian violence; Catch-22.

If there is no “Iraqi Security Forces” purified of sectarian combatants and committed to a national unity government one cannot carry out the strategy of “rapid infusion of American military trainers… [to] improve the Iraqi security forces [so] that virtually all of the American combat brigades may be withdrawn by the early part of 2008.” To continue to train a sectarian-infiltrated “Iraqi Security Force” will only contribute to the very problem one is trying to solve.

What Can Be Done in Iraq?

2006-12-07T10:55:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what it was about August 2005 but two wise observers of our Iraq policy made suggestions then that are worth looking at again today. On August 21, 2005, current professor and former military man Andrew Bacevich spoke out in a Washington Post Op-Ed, "Call It a Day".

Among other things Bacevich wrote:

Rather than producing liberal democracy, our meddling in Iraqi politics has exacerbated political dysfunction. And by signaling the importance that it attributes to satisfying the core interests of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds alike, Washington has encouraged all three factions to increase their demands. Convinced that the Americans will never permit a cataclysmic collision, each faction is committed to playing a high-stakes game of chicken. If Iraq in August 2005 qualifies as the political equivalent of a clapped-out, self-abusing dependent, then the Bush administration ought to be recognized as being an enabler.... Stability -- defined as preserving a unified Iraq and reducing the insurgency -- cannot be imposed. It can only be negotiated by the various factions constituting the Iraqi polity. The issues dividing those factions are by no means trivial. But their common interest in maintaining the integrity of the state is also great. Announcing the U.S. departure will concentrate the minds of Iraqi leaders of all stripes. It will clear away any misconceptions regarding the consequences of secession.In addition to assuming that Iraqis require American supervision, the Bush administration's insistence on staying the course also implicitly assumes that a U.S. withdrawal would leave a dangerous political vacuum in the region. But this assumption too is suspect. More likely, the American departure would foster a political dynamic in which Iraq's neighbors would exert themselves to keep Iraq from spinning out of control -- not out of any concern for the well-being of the Iraqi peoplebut out of sheer self-interest.

On August 22 Juan Cole, current professor and former military brat, offered a 10 point plan for disengaging from Iraq. Today on his blog Professor Cole has dusted off this plan and suggested comparing it to the Iraq Study Group's recommendations 17 months later. Cole wrote today:

Alas, I no longer think that the US military can plausibly play the role I suggested for it below, and I had no idea of how vicious the civil war could get with nighttime death squads. They don't need set piece battles to kill 60 a day in the streets of Baghdad. But, it seems to me that these suggestions track pretty well with those of the Baker-Hamilton commission.

Iraq Study Group Report, Part 2

2006-12-06T20:02:00.000-05:00

I just saw an interesting interview with James Baker and Lee Hamilton on The Lehrer News Hour and the two were surprisingly candid and not just blowing smoke with a lot of politician-speak. One thing emphasized, especially by Hamilton, was how important it was that our support of the Iraqi government be conditional on their making progress on specific milestones rather than unconditional. Making rewards, support, etc. conditional on work, achievement, etc. is a fundamental part of the American Ideology. How many times have we heard that if say, workers are 'given' unemployment insurance this will create the 'moral hazard' of their not wishing to work! But the Personal Responsibility Crusaders (thanks to Jacob Hacker for this phrase) of the Bush administration seem to entirely forget this fundamental principle of the American Creed when it comes to the Iraqi government. The American taxpayer is being asked to support them to the tune of several billions of dollars per month until they are successful and secure, no conditions or strings attached. Apparently there's no 'moral hazard' or 'perverse incentive' that Iraqis will get used to our money and support and continue to squabble among themselves indefinitely and fail to be motivated to solve their own problems. This is just another example of how thoroughly inconsistent pseudo-conservatives are, their only principle is remember your 'talking points' and repeat them at every available opportunity.

Iraq Study Group Report

2006-12-06T17:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, the long awaited Iraq Study Group Report is out and this will begin a phase where it's very important to watch carefully what actually happens besides talk. Not to put too fine a point on it, George W Bush is a liar and one who feels entirely justified in lying: this was clearly demonstrated, for those who need more evidence, when he lied about whether he'd replace Rumsfeld a few days before the election and then after he'd dumped Rummy after the election and was asked about this contradiction he blithely said that he believed political campaign tactics justified his lying. So now that he's lost the election the Rove-Machiavelli spin is how much he wants to come together and cooperate. Do not believe a word of it.

According to the Washington Post the report lays emphasis on "substantially expanding the American effort to train fledgling Iraqi security forces while pulling U.S. troops back from combat and patrols." The key is the latter part: will Bush/Cheney pull troops back out of harm's way so we are less likely to have more US kids killed? I tend to doubt it. I heard pseudo-con Kagan (Frederick?) on NPR call for 50,000 more troops. And yet the ISG report says: "The American military has little reserve force to call on if it needs ground forces to respond to other crises around the world."

Iraqi "Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Tuesday that he would send envoys to neighboring countries to plan a conference on Iraq, adding momentum to calls for a regional approach to quell the increasingly anarchic war here." (See New York Times.) This is apparently a change of mind for Maliki and may be a positive sign. The ISG report also places major emphasis about talking to at least Syria about Iraq but I'm not sure the pseudo-conservative generated hostility toward Syria hasn't already made this next to impossible: when James Baker advocated this today he felt the need to make all sorts of bows to the crazy pseudo-con nonsense, saying this wasn't "talking for the sake of talking" and we would be very tough with Syria in any talks having a whole list of things we'd ask of them. These are clear signs of the pseudo-conservative distortions that have been injected into US foreign policy: who in the world would advocate "talking for the sake of talking", this is one of those crazy strawmen erected by the pseudo-cons which everyone now seems to feel they must knock down. It's fascinating how the 'toughest' right-wing nonsense tends to set the terms of debate; no one will stand up and say the pseudo-cons have no clothes, that all the stuff they say about not 'talking for the sake of talking' is simply idiotic rhetoric that should simply be ignored.

Bad Signs Concerning Iraq War

2006-12-05T08:34:00.000-05:00

We know al Maliki is saying the US troops should remain in Iraq. Now we have another significant Shia leader, al Hakim, saying the same thing. Al Hakim is also telling Bush to hit Sunni guerrillas harder so apparently no reaching out to Sunnis there. Apparently al Hakim does not want a regional conference of Arab nations on Iraq because he is close to Iran, Iran already has strong influence in Iraq, and a regional conference would mean Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Sunni regimes would gain control and Hakim opposes that.

To me this sounds like Vietnam all over again: our government leaders have become entwined with local leaders with their own local interests, the latter make them want to encourage us to keep our troops there while also opposing other potential paths to peace because these threaten their local power ambitions. The Bush administration can play these forces to keep us there till he leaves in 2009. Only a strong, courageous American leader determined to extricate us could get us out. And there are so many essential things we could do with the money being squandered in Iraq that would truly strengthen us here at home. This makes me think again of Paul Kennedy's warning in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000:

Most of the historical examples covered here suggest there is a noticeable ‘lag time’ between the trajectory of a state’s relative economic strength and the trajectory of its military/territorial influence…. 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 there is a likelihood that the United States today is a "Great Power in relative decline" that is "spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert[ing] potential resources from ‘investment’."

There is a good chance our pseudo-conservative 'tough' leaders are running this country into a ditch and few will notice until it's too late. Through policies of failing to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting a terrorist-producing war in Iraq, spending vast sums of money on useless war and starving investments that need to made at home (see Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift), increasing the resources of the wealthy while advising working Americans to 'eat cake'--these pseudo-conservatives are destroying a great country while at the same time succeeding in convincing many that they are the true patriots. They are certainly masters of Madison Avenue PR, 'packaging', propaganda and 'spin'; you have to give them that.

And Now a 'Leaked' Rumsfeld Memo

2006-12-03T10:37:00.000-05:00

The New York Times obtained a leaked memo Rumsfeld wrote about possible 'new' directions in Iraq; the memo was written two days before Rummy resigned. Here is NYT analysis of the memo. Here is Washington Post analysis. Finally, here's Juan Cole's interesting analysis.

Here are some thoughts of mine: Rumsfeld, the brilliant beureaucratic manager, former CEO of major drug companies, presumably a fellow who knows how to make strategic plans and determine methods to judge whether those plans are producing desired results, is apparently endorsing, after 3 years and 9 months of an unimaginably expensive war, some ideas that others have been calling for since nearly the beginning of the war:

1) "Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made)."

It's taken this brilliant manager 3 years and 9 months to recommend the setting of benchmarks with which to judge whether we are succeeding or not!! Joe Biden and Richard Lugar were calling for those years ago.

2) Put "one or more Iraqi soldiers with every U.S. and possibly Coalition squad, to improve our units’ language capabilities and cultural awareness."

Frankly, I am simply appalled. How in the world could it possibly take nearly 4 years to suggest that our troops need to be able to have Arabic speakers with them and be more culturally aware of Iraqi beliefs and customs. This is so amazing I am left speechless; how do you explain this monumental blindness?

3) "Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help."

As I've pointed out in several previous posts, this seems like a fairly obvious idea when you are being seen as an occupier and want to change that and be seen as an invited helper. Brzezinski has been suggesting something like this for at least a year.

4) "Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. — and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance."

Hmmmmm. John Murtha? Who's John Murtha?

5) "Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

Aren't Republicans the ones who are always FIRST to tell us that placing responsibility upon those who benefit most from action is the golden path to fostering "individual initiative"? Aren't they the FIRST to warn of 'moral hazard' and 'perverse incentives' when people are provided too easily with aid? (See Jacob Hacker's marvelous new book, "The Great Risk Shift", for more on these topics.)

I've thought a good deal about how a smart guy like Rumsfeld could make so many stupid mistakes and, so far, the main cause I've been able to come up with is arrogance. This guy is perhaps one of the most arrogant of a notably arrogant group: politicians. He seemed to feel his judgment was close to infallible and thus if he thought it up it must be great; there was no real reason to respect anyone else's opinion. And, surrounded as he was by true believers like Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Wurmser, Rove, et al., there certainly was no stimulus to press him to come up with alternative ideas.

How Bad a President is George W Bush?

2006-12-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

Today's Washinton Post Outlook Section features a discussion of how bad a president George W Bush will be judged by history and historians: first, second, third and fourth.

Whether he's fifth worst or, as Eric Foner argues, worst ever, I suspect he'll definitely be down in the basement somewhere. And to think he did not even win the popular vote in 2000 and only became President through a series of accidents (butterfly ballots, Katherine Harris) plus a politically divided Supreme Court.

Tilting Toward SOME of the Shia

2006-12-03T09:30:00.000-05:00

Here are two excellent articles on the latest in Iraq War strategy: one from Robin Wright of the Washington Post, and another from Laura Rozen at American Prospect. I think the Laura Rozen piece is perhaps the best summary of the options under consideration by the administration.

I want to raise one question about the ‘tilting toward the Shia [plus Kurds]’ strategy. Wright said that “some insiders call the proposal the ’80 percent’ solution” because the Sunnis only number 20% of Iraq’s population. Wright’s article doesn’t mention the significant minority of Shia committed to Moktada al Sadr. Sadr controls 30 seats in the Iraqi 275 seat parliament and the support of these was necessary for al Maliki’s success in becoming Prime Minister. But many articles have recently made it clear that the ‘tilt’ strategy involves SPLITTING the Shia into al Maliki’s government plus followers of Abdel Aziz al Hakim’s Shia followers in SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) on the one hand, and Sadr’s followers and his Mahdi Militia on the other. I’m not sure how to estimate Sadr’s following but Newsweek’s latest alarmist coverage of Sadr suggests he has wide support.

How would tilting toward SOME Shia actually work? Even if al Maliki and al Hakim’s groups could get together (and they have competed in the past), what would come of pitting some Shia against other Shia while the Sunni insurgency was free to roam? One of al Sadr’s consistent and central demands has been for the U.S. to withdraw; this demand is shared by “91 percent of Sunnis”. There was some temporary cooperation between Sunnis and Sadrists in the first battle over Falluja. Might Sadrists and Sunni insurgents not join against the U.S., at least temporarily?

Juan Cole recently wrote:

The al-Maliki government would be given "another chance" to crack down on Shiite militias such as the Mahdi Army and would be given greater freedom of movement in confronting them militarily. In other words, Bush is trying to set al-Maliki up for a confrontation with the Sadr Movement…. If Bush gets his way, we could see substantial Shiite on Shiite violence in the coming months, of which it is likely the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement will take advantage.

The notion that somehow siding with the al Maliki government plus al Hakim's SCIRI followers against Sadr and his Mahdi militia raises the question of what the actual likely consequences of such a tactic would be. It is important to think about this because I think it's clear from the recent US media bashing of al Sadr that something like this is afoot.

So You Don't Believe in the Authoritarian Personality Huh?

2006-12-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

This just in from the New Haven Advocate thanks to Bill Christensen: a study "found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.... 'Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader,' Lohse says. 'If your world is very mixed up, there’s something very comforting about someone telling you, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

Maliki Says Iraqis Can Take Over Security By June 2007

2006-11-30T16:31:00.000-05:00

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said that Iraqis could take over Iraqi security by June 2007.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready, to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," Maliki said in an interview with ABC News after his meeting with Bush. Asked whether he would disarm militias such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric, Maliki, himself a Shiite, said, "Definitely. And the government is doing that with all militias, with no exception. There will be only the arms for government troops."

Will anyone remember this promise in June 2007?

Some Experts Critique Stephen Hadley's 'Leaked' Memo

2006-11-30T08:57:00.000-05:00

In an interesting article by reporters for McClatchy Newspapers some experts were asked for their views on the feasibility of policy suggestions made by NSC advisor Stephen Hadley which was 'leaked' just before Bush met with al Maliki. Here are some of their views:

Trying to push anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr out of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as the memo suggests, would be throwing gasoline on a fire, they said. Sadr's party is the largest in parliament, with 32 seats, and Maliki became prime minister only with his support. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia controls large parts of Baghdad and southern Iraq, and many Iraqi Shiites hail him as their only protection from attacks by rival Sunni Muslims, which American and Iraqi forces have failed to stop. 'Sadr is aware of the considerable extent to which his forces ... constitute a significant part of the power in the streets, and there is no reason why he would simply want to surrender that leverage,' said Paul Pillar, the former top U.S. intelligence analyst on the Middle East.

And again:

Trying to force Sadr out of the government - in which his followers control some of the key ministries - and crack down on his militia almost certainly would lead to the government's collapse. It also would ignite a wave of violence by his militia and supporters in Baghdad and the Shiite-dominated south, much of it probably aimed at the U.S.-led multinational force. 'Sadr is not going to rein in the Mahdi Army,' said Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Calif., and the author of a new book on modern political Shiism.

On a second Hadley suggestion:

Hadley suggested that Maliki overhaul his Cabinet by replacing key members of Shiite and Sunni religious parties with "nonsectarian, capable technocrats." But the Iraqi Constitution requires that new ministers be approved by two-thirds of parliament, a vote that Sadr could block. A Cabinet shakeup also would unravel the power-sharing deal on controlling the ministries that took the religious parties months to negotiate. "The ministries are run like fiefdoms," Nasr said. "Most ministers don't even come to Cabinet meetings."

On a third Hadley suggestion:

Experts also were skeptical of a Hadley proposal that the United States provide "monetary support" for forming a new coalition of moderate Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish parliamentarians to keep Maliki in power if he's unable to cut loose from Sadr. Several experts wondered what moderates Hadley was referring to. Moreover, such an alliance would require Maliki to forge stronger bonds with Sadr's chief rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. He's the head of another Shiite party that belongs to the ruling coalition and whose militia maintains even closer ties to the Islamic regime of neighboring Iran than the Mahdi Army does. Finding Sunnis to join such a grouping would be impossible, because Hakim has been a leading proponent of purging members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the bureaucracy and the military, Nasr said.

Finally:

Maliki already has tried unsuccessfully to implement some of Hadley's ideas, several experts noted. These include attempts to purge the police and Interior Ministry of sectarian death squads and to disarm militias. Phebe Marr, a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, said that some of the more modest ideas that Hadley proposed in the memo - such as appointing technocrats to the government and cleaning up the Interior Ministry - were achievable. "I think these small steps can be done. I think Maliki is doing them. But we have very different perceptions of time and timetable," Marr said, referring to growing political pressure in the United States to withdraw troops. As for a "spectacular breakthrough" from the Iraqi government in the near future, "forget it," she said.

Stephen Hadley's 'leaked' memo can be seen here.

Juan Cole on What Maliki Wants from Bush

2006-11-30T08:36:00.000-05:00

Today Juan Cole helps us understand some of the details often left out of criticism of al Maliki's performance: "Al-Maliki has been pressing Washington for some time to give him the authority to order much bigger battle units into action without securing permission first from the US military. The PM has been frustrated that he isn't allowed to set security policy but then is blamed for not achieving security." Hmmmm. That's typical of nearly all our performance in Iraq: we jealously guard the power but criticize them if things go wrong; and scapegoating the Iraqis has recently become the US power elite's favorite tune.

What Will Bush Do About Iraq?

2006-11-30T08:06:00.000-05:00

Thomas Powers writes on intelligence and has an interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times. It points to the past stubborness of presidents faced with bad war options like Johnson in Vietnam. It points to Robert Gates' role in facilitating the secret war against the Contras even after Congress had passed the Boland amendment trying to stop it and how Gates proved a loyal CIA soldier for two presidents. Powers concludes:

Today the choice facing Washington is not quite as stark as the one that confronted Lyndon Johnson in 1965, but it is close. Mr. Gates has spent the last nine months working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, whose much awaited recommendations will be revealed next Wednesday. Getting out is the simplest remedy, but no one wants to shoulder the blame for what follows. Staying the course has already been rejected by the president. That leaves only some kind of altered or renewed effort to postpone the day of reckoning. Defeating the insurgents is only half of the challenge; harder will be finding some way to restrain or disband the Shiite militias without bringing them into the war against us. Down that road would lie a spiraling conflict as protracted and unwinnable as the war in Vietnam. The Republicans may have lost the midterm elections, but to my ear, on the subject of Iraq, the president has never sounded ready to accept anything that might be called defeat. Iraq is not Vietnam, but we are the same. We find ourselves, at a parallel moment, militarily committed to a policy on the verge of conspicuous failure. The American people, now as then, are unsettled by the phrase “cut and run” and reluctant to put their judgment ahead of the president’s. Above all, American presidents are the same. Bad news from Baghdad and opposition at home may point to a lowering of expectations, at the very least, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Presidents take failure personally, can lift their voices above the din of opponents, and can use the immense power of their office to force events in the directions they choose. The verdict of the elections was clear. The public wants to let Iraqis handle their own troubles from here on out, while we start bringing our soldiers home. But that’s not what President Bush has said he wants, so there will very likely be a series of fights over Iraq that will extend to the president’s last day in office. Robert Gates is smart, quiet, dogged and loyal: a well-considered choice for defense secretary by a president determined to bring home that “coonskin on the wall,” to borrow a phrase made memorable by an earlier president in a similar fix, Lyndon Johnson.

I agree with Mr. Powers that this is indeed the most likely outcome. The one possibility I hadn't thought of is that our actions might bring the Shia into the war against us; oh my, and I thought I was pessimistic.

Perhaps Iraq Study Group Might Make a Difference

2006-11-30T00:23:00.000-05:00

This is an important article from the New York Times. It sounds like although the Baker-Hamiliton Iraq Study Group did come up with a compromise at least it recommends "a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop[s] short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal."

The compromise includes a recommendation for "pullback" which means redeployment and would presumably take a substantial number of our troops out of daily combat and thus limit casualties: "The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.)" By not insisting on a timetable and not telling the administration how to achieve this pullback it allows maximum flexibility to the administration and increases the likelihood the administration can more comfortably adopt the recomendation; very cagily diplomatic that Baker. (But I will NEVER forgive James Baker for being responsible for bullying George W Bush into the presidency in Florida in 2000; he foisted this ignorant, stubborn incompetent on us.)

The recommendations also agree with what I have previously argued is perhaps the key to getting out: "Committee members struggled with ways, short of a deadline, to signal to the Iraqis that Washington would not prop up the government with military forces endlessly." We have to put real pressure on the Iraqis to take over themselves and, I would add, offer to help the Iraqis when requested. Then we get out of the 'occupier' position and become an invited helper.

Finally, "the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus."

This is to the good and perhaps it will help the administration get over its allergy to negotiation. What is not so clear to me is precisely how Damascus and Tehran can actually affect the situation in Iraq. However, if there is an increased and serious effort to make progress upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I suspect this would have manifold benefits.

It's Looking Like Laura Rozen Was Right

2006-11-29T18:56:00.000-05:00

Laura Rozen reported on a possible tilt toward the Shia and against the Sunnis within the Bush administration. I'm coming to the conclusion she was right about this at least as a backup plan or a threat. Plan A seems to be to lean on the Iraqi Sunnis to give more support to the al Maliki government while also leaning on al Maliki to disarm Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi militia. I think there are a number of reasons this isn't likely to succeed (see my What Next post).

When and if this fails, Plan B could be to forget about reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia, forget about 'national unity government, and side with the majority Shia against the Sunnis. The Shia could probably drive the Sunnis out of Baghdad and perhaps isolate them in the Sunni Triangle. (There was a report today that our troops are admitting defeat in Al Anbar province, which, if I'm not mistaken is much of the Sunni triangle. What if all troops from Al Anbar went to Baghdad?) Of course if the administration sided with the Iraqi Shia, Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan would be very upset. At least the Saudis would worry about political mobilization of their Shia minority. The Shia Iranians and Shia Hizballah would of course be very much strengthened.

That such a Plan B is being considered, at least as a threat to pressure Iraqi Sunnis to compromise and cooperate with an Iraqi Shia-dominated government, comes from Laura Rozen's piece, from this video of an MSNBC interview with Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post who has superb Pentagon sources, as well as other hints. The other hints include: 1) this line from a New York Times article, "'There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,' the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice." Obviously "taking one side" against the Sunni insurgency is being considered. 2) this other snippet from Laura Rozen re Cheney, "The fault lines going into that meeting included Cheney's office and some in the NSC arguing for more aggressively backing the Shias, and in particular, Hakim. Note the Hadley memo's recommendation to press Hakim/SCIRI to support Maliki, and the overall concern about whether Maliki is up to the task."

Since there are such significant downsides to Plan B I wonder if it isn't more in play as a threat with which to pressure moderate Sunnis to support al Maliki's government. My overall reading leads me to the hunch that the administration will send some more troops to Baghdad as a last ditch attempt to stop sectarian violence and disarm the Mahdi militia and that as usual there will be no benchmarks to judge whether this plan is succeeding and this will simply extend Bush's 'stay the course' stance in Iraq indefinitely. Bush and Cheney absolutely hate to compromise or admit they have been wrong so they'll do something that they package as a 'new' approach and keep on keepin' on. Never forget that 'packaging' is their longest suit and they'll say anything to 'sell' their latest gambit.

What Next for Bush in Iraq?

2006-11-29T18:33:00.000-05:00

In the jockeying for power preparatory to any change in Bush administration policy in Iraq there has been a flurry of reports. As I noted in prior posts Laura Rozen is hearing that the administration may be tilting toward the Shia against the Sunnis. Tom Hayden reported a scenario that suggested a tilt toward the Sunnis against the Shia. The New York Times reported this yesterday:

When Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice arrive in Amman on Wednesday, they will try to enlist help from Sunni Arab leaders to try to rein in the violence in Iraq by putting pressure on Sunni insurgents…. Specifically, the United States wants Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to work to drive a wedge between the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, a senior administration official said. That would require getting the predominantly Sunni Arab nations to work to get moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki, a Shiite. That would theoretically give Mr. Maliki the political strength necessary to take on Mr. Sadr’s Shiite militias. “There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,” the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice.

This report suggests a two-prong strategy of putting pressure on Iraqi Sunni insurgents, using the Saudis, Jordan and Egypt to help with this while at the same time pressuring al Maliki to break with Moktada al-Sadr and disarm the Mahdi militia associated with al-Sadr. In an earlier post I mentioned Barbara Walter’s book on civil wars, Committing to Peace. One of the most difficult steps in negotiating the end of a civil war is getting each side to lay down its arms and trust that promises made in negotiations will be honored. To me it seems like this would be nearly impossible in Iraq because there are not yet even open negotiations between the al Maliki government and the insurgency much less any promises made. However, the Sadrist walkout of the parliament today and suspension of support for al Maliki’s government does show new stress on the relationship between al Maliki and the Sadrists.

This leaked memo of Stephen Hadley’s does seem to suggest that an important prong of the administration’s policy is to attempt to split al Maliki from al Sadr and to somehow get the Mahdi militia disarmed. This will be extremely difficult to do. My reading of the New York Times article on this leak suggests that it was planned by the administration. Why? Perhaps to place pressure on al Maliki just prior to Bush’s meeting with him tomorrow. Bush’s history suggests he likes to put pressure on people to get them to lean more his way.

One part of this program is to demonize Moktada al Sadr and it is remarkable what an unseemly rush the main stream media is to jump on this bandwagon. The news in the last few days has suddenly seemed to be filled with dramatic stories about this “most dangerous man in Iraq” (next Monday’s cover story in Newsweek!). I don’t have enough knowledge of al Sadr to make a strong judgment about him one way or the other but the way the press supinely presses the administration line of the moment is deplorable. They are so anxious to jump on the bandwagon and scapegoat someone. In their knee-jerk demonization of our opponents they fail in their duty to clarify and inform our public about reality and instead they encourage a soap opera version of the news.

The weakness in the administration’s blame al Maliki and demonize al Sadr move are pointed out in another article in the New York Times:

[It appears] American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply…. American fortunes here are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals, American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad say. They say they see few policy options that can turn the situation around, other than for Iraqi leaders to come to a realization that time is running out. It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq with some of the proposals outlined in a classified [leaked] White House memorandum…. Many of the proposals appear to be based on an assumption that the White House memo itself calls into question: that Prime Minister Maliki can be persuaded to break with 30 years of commitment to Shiite religious identity and set a new course, or abandon the ruling Shiite religious alliance to lead a radically different kind of government, a moderate coalition of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians…. Against these judgments, some key passages in the Hadley memo seem at odds with the reality on the ground, as if the steady worsening of America’s prospects here has driven the White House to reach for solutions that defy the gloomy conclusions of America’s diplomats and field commanders, not to mention some of Mr. Maliki’s closest political associates…. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, has been clear… that the Shiites must subordinate their differences to the cause of consolidating Shiite power. So it is hard to imagine Mr. Maliki approaching Ayatollah Sistani to win approval “for actions that could split the Shia politically,” as the Hadley memo suggests. Shiite leaders, who are tiring of Mr. Maliki, appear to be thinking of replacing him with another Shiite religious leader, and not of sundering the alliance and surrendering the power the Shiites have awaited for centuries. But if recent interviews in Baghdad with senior American and Iraqi officials are a guide, a bigger problem for the administration in effecting change here may be that the United States, in toppling Saddam Hussein and sponsoring elections that brought the Shiites to power, began a process that left Washington with ever-diminishing influence.
One reason for the declining American influence lies in policies that, for various reasons, alienated the political class, most of them former exiles like Mr. Maliki who rode back to Baghdad on the strength of American military power. Many Shiite leaders resent the Americans for compelling them to share power in the new government with the minority Sunni Arabs — a policy, the Shiites say, that guaranteed paralysis for the government. Sunni leaders still resent the American invasion, and the imposition of an electoral process that ended centuries of Sunni dominance. Just as much, they fume over the pervasive influence of neighboring Iran, which backs the Shiite parties. And secular politicians, marginalized by the Shiite and Sunni Islamist politicians who dominate the government, say they, too, have lost faith in the Americans, for failing to protect Iraq’s secular traditions. “Politically, their position is weaker in all aspects,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish leader, said of the Americans. “They just got weaker and weaker, and many more people who were supporting them are supporting them less.”

Tilting in Iraq, Part 2

2006-11-28T11:49:00.000-05:00

Laura Rozen pointed out this from the Washington Post as evidence for her view that the Bush administration may tilt toward the Sunnis:

But in a sign of the discord in Washington, the senior U.S. intelligence official said the situation requires that the administration abandon its long-held goal of national reconciliation and instead "pick a winner" in Iraq. He said he understands that means the Sunnis are likely to bolt from the fragile government. "That's the price you're going to have to pay," he said.

This "senior U.S. intelligence official" was not identified in the article and note that the article says his comments were "a sign of the discord in Washington". Thus we still don't know what the administration is going to do and who, if anyone, they are going to tilt toward.

But here's a scenario stressing accomodating the Sunnis, under the title "Will Bush Rehabilitate the Baathists?" Juan Cole reports from Arabic newspaper Al-Zaman but doesn't say whether Al-Zaman tends to be biased toward Sunnis or not.

Flailing of the Bushies

2006-11-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

Juan Cole observed that the Bush administration is panicked and hasn't much idea what to do in Iraq and thus is flailing around. Something like this does seem to be true.

This process sounds so muddled because Washington is flailing around without the slightest idea of what could be done, practically speaking, in Iraq, according to Time: "Several officials who are in touch with commission members said that with violence appearing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the group has been flummoxed about finding a solution. "There's complete bewilderment as to what to do," one official said. "They're very frustrated. They can't come up with anything. For the last couple months, they've been thrashing around, calling people, trying to find ideas."

I think this flailing around for a solution after the elections has also activated the various groups in Iraq to jockey more aggressively for power.

Thank You Jimmy Carter

2006-11-28T10:36:00.000-05:00

Former President Jimmy Carter has just published a book entitled, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. In it he tries to take a more even-handed view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and as a result we already hear the charges of anti-semitism. If anyone thinks it possible to criticize Israel in the U.S. without being charged with anti-semitism they must either be blindly pro-Israeli or not paying attention. Carter mentions the Israel lobby in the U.S. and its suppression of criticism of Israel, however, the fact of his waiting until he was 82 to publish this book is itself likely implicit evidence of the Israel lobby's power; if he had published as a younger man it would have tempted the lobby to brand him anti-semitic and discourage many from listening to him. Already the knee-jerk criticisms can be heard from otherwise liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers who fear the electoral power of the lobby. If you don't believe in this power read former-Congressman Paul Findley's book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby.

Here is another recent article regarding the Israel lobby and its attacks upon academic freedom: Academic Freedom Declines Across the United States.

Here's another from Inside Higher Ed.

Here's another based upon Stalinist right-winger (no, this is not a contradiction in terms) David Horowitz who 40 years ago was on the left.

Nir Rosen on Iraq

2006-11-28T08:48:00.000-05:00

Nir Rosen recently published a long and informative article on his reporting in Iraq. As a journalistic account it provides much information but in a somewhat difficult to assimilate fashion because of the way the subparts are strung together. But here is an important excerpt:

With the January 30, 2005, electoral success of the Shia parties, the balance of power between Shias and Sunnis shifted, initiating an apartheid process. In the ministry of health, pictures of Muqtada and his father were everywhere.... And in the ministry of transportation, walls were adorned with Shia posters, including some specifically supporting Muqtada. Sadrists instituted a program they called “cleansing the ministry of Saddamists,” with “Saddamist” defined so broadly that all Sunnis felt vulnerable. Ousted Sunnis were replaced by Shias with no apparent qualifications.... Efficiency dropped; the ministries of health and transportation barely functioned, and the ministry of the interior operated an anti-Sunni death squad. Its secret prisons were uncovered in November 2005.... Elections may have represented a victory for the Bush administration, but they also enshrined sectarianism more deeply in Iraq.

The bottomline, it seems to me, is that the very insistence upon Iraqi elections may have exacerbated sectarian splits between Shia and Sunni. This again underlines how devilishly complicated it is to intervene in a foreign culture, topple the existing government and then believe you will be able to easily and successfully take actions that will only have intended consequences. Apparently the U.S.'s actions in Iraq have frequently had the unintended consequence of fracturing the country into warring sectarian and tribal factions and encouraging civil war.

The Salience of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2006-11-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

I have been impressed how many times in my reading I have come across example after example of Middle Eastern governments placing primary emphasis upon resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even in the context of other obviously important problems which might have taken precedence. I am collecting these examples for my book. Here is the latest one. In a New York Times article on the Middle East a portion was devoted to Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have a lot of worries at this time including the increasing influence of Iran, their fears of masses of Iraqi refugees flooding into their country, their worries that growing Shia power and confidence might inflame their Shia minority, etc. The Times reported:

During an interview on the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday, [Saudi] King Abdullah said that his agenda with the president extended beyond Iraq, and that his top concern in the region was the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians — which he called the “core issue” in the Middle East — along with tensions in Lebanon.

I believe that the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is certainly a core issue for the U.S. in that a satisfactory solution would likely do much to lessen the terrorist threat against the U.S., purportedly Bush's main goal. Yet the administration has carried out a policy that Bill Gallagher appropriately called "malign neglect".

Inanities of 'Tough' Foreign Policy Advocates

2006-11-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

A perfect example of the absurd inanities uttered by 'tough' foreign policy advocates was offered by Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. In a New York Times article published today Mr. Hadley favored us with a gem of sage opinion that undoubtedly exemplifies the quality of advice he has been sharing with Bush for the last several years. In an article reporting that the Baker Iraq Study Group would recommend that the U.S. talk with Iran and Syria in an attempt to improve the situation in Iraq Mr. Hadley, in his wisdom, emitted this pearl: "'Talking isn’t a strategy,' he said...." My goodness, here is an insight so blindingly brilliant that it will surely be heard round the world: "Talking isn't a strategy." Many of us will be glad that Mr. Hadley has disabused us of the belief, certainly widely held, that 'talking' is a strategy.

I frankly have difficulty understanding how this nonsense is reported without some critical comment. Clearly, no one in their right mind thought 'talking' was a strategy, and yet the National Security Advisor of the United States of America is apparently allowed to erect this strawman and deftly knock it to the ground without comment by the New York Times. Apparently Mr. Hadley does believe that NOT talking to our opponents is a strategy because the Bush administration has pursued this 'strategy' all over the world: they haven't talked (much) to the North Koreans, they haven't talked to the Iranians, they currently aren't talking to the Syrians, they refuse to deal with the democratically elected Hamas government of the Palestinians, they have ignored the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for six years, etc. The Bush administration didn't even have a strategic vision for their war of choice in Iraq; and THEY are enlightening the rest of us benighted auditors on what is and what is not a strategy?

Such inane, knee-jerk opposition to talks and negotiations with our foreign opponents is a prime part of the explanation of Why Pseudo-Conservatives Can't Do Foreign Policy.

More Signs of Change in Iraq

2006-11-26T14:08:00.000-05:00

I don't believe in saying I understand something better than I do so at this point I can share that it seems as though there are increasing signs of jockeying for power and possible realignment of alliances going on in Iraq, however, I don't know how to accurately judge the significance of these signs or predict the outcome. If one looks at recent posts of Juan Cole and Laura Rozen you may see what I mean. Cole reports:

Harith al-Dhari, Secretary-General of the Association of Muslim Scholars said in Cairo that the Arab League and the United Nations should withdraw their support from the Shiite-dominated government of PM Nuri al-Maliki.

This sounds like non-Iraqi Sunnis trying to weaken support for the Shia-dominated al Maliki government. Cole also reports:

Iraqi Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani recommended entrusting peshmargas with guarding members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. Al-Mashhadani made his recommendation during the council's in camera session that discussed the members' safety, today 23 November 06. Al-Mashhadani's proposal comes following an unsuccessful assassination attempt against him in which his convoy was targeted by explosive devises.

For a long time the Kurdish militia, the Peshmerga, has wanted to be allowed by the Americans to be more involved in defeating the insurgency and increasing the power of the Kurds. Presumably the Americans wanted to do it without calling on militias representing only sub-groups within Iraq. This report makes it sound like the Kurdish Peshmerga may be called upon now to become more involved.

Moreover, Laura Rozen noted a newspaper report:

Followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took over state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis 'terrorists' and issue what appeared to many viewers as a call to arms. [...] Al-Maliki's administration acknowledged it was powerless to interrupt the pro-Sadr program on the official Iraqiya channel, during which Sadr City residents shouted, 'There is no government! There is no state!' Several speakers described neighborhoods and well-known Sunni politicians as 'terrorists' and threatened them with reprisal.

This sounds like further disintegration of the Iraqi central government's power and Sadrists, who have until recently been within the al Maliki coalition now calling for al Maliki's fall. As I said, what I sense in this is increased jockeying for power, possible disintegration of the central government's support, and the possibility of new power alignments within Iraq and among the surrounding states. This seems to have been accelerated by the American elections which makes it look to all as though potential changes in American policy might be imminent; thus Iraqi and regional groups are trying to get themselves in the strongest possible position.

Chuck Hagel's Views on Iraq

2006-11-25T10:55:00.000-05:00

Senator Chuck Hagel Republican of Nebraska has written an excellent article for the Washington Post outlining his latest assessment of the Iraq war. Here are a few of his comments:

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose. We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

While I wish Sen. Hagel was correct that: "We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation--regardless of our noble purpose." I truly doubt this because it will only be true if a coherent criticism of the authoritarian pseudo-conservative 'tough' foreign policy position can be systematically countered by an organized articulate opposition. This takes numbers of people, an articulated position and, most of all, guts. The fear-mongers of the right have the easiest sell and too often there are 'liberals' who join them in advocating a combative, militaristic, crusading foreign policy. Reasonable critics of the 'bully' theory of foreign policy must have the courage to stand for what they believe even in the face of being called names like 'soft' and 'appeasers'.

If You Didn't Think Iraq Could Get Worse, Look Again

2006-11-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

It's hard to imagine how anyone could read Juan Cole's posts on Iraq in the last couple of days and not think that a situation that was already horrible has suddenly worsened. I'm not sure why this is but the sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunnis appears to have escalated. I suppose that it's possible that the American elections have alerted everyone that U.S. participation in Iraq might soon change and motivated all groups to make desperate efforts to strengthen their power positions in case any important decisions are made soon. The Washington Post is also commenting upon this deterioration; however, if you read this WAPO article be sure to read further down below all the usual verbal nonsense uttered by the administration.

New Ideas for Health Care for All

2006-11-24T17:48:00.000-05:00

Balanced Choice Health Care is a new set of ideas that Ivan Miller, PhD has developed to implement an American health insurance system which will cover everyone. He has been working on this for 12 years. I have added a link on my blog to Balanced Choice because I believe this proposal merits serious attention.

The Balanced Choice proposal has innovative ideas. It provides universal coverage, avoids rigid government price controls, allows full choice of provider, gives providers freedom to set fees, frees employers from providing health care coverage, and utilizes very little managed care. The system costs less than is currently being spent on health care. Because it is good for employers, providers and consumers, it has the potential to create a political alliance that can result in fixing health care financing.

Is Balanced Choice too good to be true? It is not that Balanced Choice is too good to be true, but that the current insurance-driven and managed care system is so bad that there is plenty of money for a sensible system. After all, the U.S. has the most expensive system in the world, 46 million uninsured, and only mediocre outcomes compared to other industrialized countries. Balanced Choice would merely provide the quality, accessibility, and efficiency that the U.S. deserves considering how much is already being spent on health care.