Blogging will continue to be light for a while as I keep trying to wrestle real life into submission.
Go to the newsstand, though, and buy this month’s Atlantic. It’s chock-full of chewy things to think about, not the least of which is Bernard Henri-Levy’s article “In the Footsteps of Tocqueville” (subscribers only, I think – but check).
In addition to a wonderful expansive view of America, he elliptically raises a crucial point – and leaves it there (in anticipation of the book, I imagine) for us to mull.
What is the role of ideology in American politics? And what should it be?
I, among many, have beaten up the Democrats (a lot) and the Republicans (a little) about their ‘fantasy ideologies’ among other things. I certainly meant to suggest that a ‘real ideology’ (whatever that might look like) would be a Darn Good Thing. Democrats should stand for something. That’s the solution to the current political malaise. Some irreducible core of belief.
But Levy tosses a bomb into my notion.
What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat? Does this division of the two Americas exist, the blue and the red, the progressive and the conservative, which Barack Obama challenged but in which Jim Harrison seems to believe?
On the one hand, I keep meeting Democrats who think like Republicans and who without any qualms, without thinking for a single second of leaving their original party, go and vote for George Bush (the former mayor of New York Ed Koch, the former CIA chief James Woolsey).
In the same vein, I keep seeing Republicans who—also without a qualm, and even without understanding my surprise—go and vote for John Kerry (Ron Reagan, the son of President Reagan) or abstain (that association of conservative gay men, the Log Cabin Republicans, one of whose leaders, Chris Barron, I interviewed in Washington, who don’t want to “endorse” Bush’s stance in favor of a constitutional amendment that would forbid gay marriage).
On one hand, then, a novel system of membership, which has no comparison to what we know in Europe, and in which one’s attachment to a party is both very strong and very pliable, extremely tenacious and in the end somewhat empty: an essentialist attachment, if you like (Koch, for instance, wouldn’t renounce it at any price, and he proudly shows me, in his Fifth Avenue office overlooking his beloved New York, hanging next to sacred images of Anwar Sadat, Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Kollek, and Mother Teresa, his photos with Hillary Clinton), yet devoid of all content and even of direction. (When I ask him what it can mean, when you vote Republican, to declare yourself a Democrat, he hesitates, becomes a little flustered, looks at the photo of Hillary as if she could whisper the answer to him, and ends up blurting out, “Stubbornness and nostalgia—a mixture of stubbornness and memory, habit and loyalty, that’s all.”)
But on the other hand, for three days I attended the Republican convention in New York. I listened to speeches given by Rudy Giuliani and Governor George Pataki. I listened to Bush. I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger tell us, with an emotion that didn’t seem entirely put on, about his experience as an immigrant coming from a socialist country (sic) to discover this America that opened its arms to him. But mostly I interviewed crowds of delegates from Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Kansas, Arkansas, each of whom I asked what being Republican and being there meant to them. And the surprise, the big surprise, is that the answers they gave me had nothing to do with the old French—but also American—cliché of a political spectacle reduced to its purely festive, playful, carnivalesque dimension, and thus without anything at stake.
Some talked to me about abortion and gay marriage. Some explained that nothing seemed more important to them than reinforcing the role of the churches or reducing the role of the urban elite. Others advocated a return to Main Street instead of Wall Street, the rehabilitation of the values of rural America as opposed to those of interventionist and cosmopolitan America, the defense of a concept of human rights that embraces the right to bear arms to defend one’s freedom and property. For others, hatred of the Clintons was a good enough reason. And for still others, the senator from Massachusetts and his plutocrat wife, Teresa, were embodiments of a France that was likened to an uneasy mixture of “femininity,” “decadent immorality,” “snobbish intellectualism,” and “chic radicalism.”
You can think what you like about these issues. You can deem them naive, retrograde, indefensible, contradictory. You can find it amusing to hear the same virtuous people condemning Teresa’s millions and defending, in the same breath, the hedge funds against the welfare state. But what you can’t say is that it’s a question of a weak or half-hearted position. Or one that’s purely pragmatic, and reduces the ideal government of the United States to a glorified board of directors. What you can’t claim is that you were present here at one more bazaar, another level of the circus, a second summit of the same nihilism that offers its two symmetrically standard Democratic and Republican versions. What you can’t argue without bad faith is that between the position of these people and that of the delegates in Boston who gave standing ovations to Howard Dean and Senator Ted Kennedy there is no difference in content or ideology.
For you can take that word, “ideology,” in whatever sense you like. You can understand it in the ordinary sense of a representation of the world. You can understand it in the sense of an illusion that conceals from people the reality of their situation. You can think about the grand philosophical “systems” and other “utopias” that Tocqueville thought Americans “mistrusted.” Or, on the contrary, you can think of this mania for “general causes,” this submission to ideas and broad social forces that act “on so many men’s faculties at once”—a tendency, he warns, that can paralyze individuals and societies. We have reached that point. These people who say “values matter more”; these activists for whom the struggle against Darwin is a sacred cause that should be argued in the schools; this blue-collar man from Buffalo to whom I explain that the promise of the current president to reduce federal taxes will have the automatic effect of impoverishing his native city even more, who replies that he couldn’t care less, because what matters to him is the problem posed by inflation in a quasi-Soviet state. These are men and women who are ready to let the questions that affect them most directly take second place to matters of principle that—in the case, for instance, of the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts—do not have, and never will have, any effect on their concrete existence. Aren’t they reacting as ideologues would, according to criteria that have to be called ideological?
A curious affair. And a curious reversal. It surprises me as a Frenchman, coming from a country that has lived under the rule of ideological passion brought to white heat—and yet has recovered from it. But I can clearly see that it is all the more disconcerting to the most careful analysts of the evolution of a society in which each person’s appreciation of the just dividends he can get from the social contract seems to be the first and last word in politics. What’s the matter with Kansas? Since when has politics stopped obeying the honest calculation of self-interest and personal ambition? How can knowledgeable, reasonable, pragmatic men work for their own servitude, thinking they’re struggling for their freedom? That, Thomas Frank, is what is called ideology. That is precisely the mechanism that La Boétie and Karl Marx described in Europe, which we, alas, have experienced only too often. Now it’s your turn, friends. And as we say in France, À votre santé! —To your very good health!
This is a tough question.
Because we want to believe that there is more than self-interest soup tying us together as a people – in fact, as the social-historical bounds that tied us are slowly loosened, we need some robust beliefs to connect us as a polity. But are we really at risk for a European-style descent into the madness of absolute belief?
Schaar points us at Lincoln and suggests that it is a belief in our unique Founding that ties us together, and the obligations we take forward in time from it which represent our patrimony. That seems to me to be a resolutely non-ideological position.
But for the life of me, I’m not sure how to tie it to contemporary politics without becoming ideological. And, reading Levy, I’m not so certain that becoming ideological – in his sense – doesn’t risk more than I’m willing to bet.
More for me to think about late at night.
“But are we really at risk for a European-style descent into the madness of absolute belief?”
Funny, I would say thats not what Europe is about. Europe has stopped believing in things. It simply accepts them.
Or do you mean that the US may enter into a phase of absolute-belief, which pre-dated the European sense of fatalism which exists now amongst many (but not all).
The original ideologues, inspired by Locke, argued for government by ideological principle in the wake of the French Revolution. When their principles got in the way of Napoleon’s whims, his propagandists made “ideologue” a dirty word.
As for Nazism and Communism, Nazism had a hopelessly confused ideology and Marxism had a hopelessly unworkable ideology. Both devolved rapidly into dictatorships (a fate that Italian Fascism accepted from the start) even more thorough and unprincipled than Napoleon’s. In that sense, they were all anti-ideological.
I think it’s a lot simpler than that; with the two parties representing Progressivism (Democrats) and Populism (Republicans); with certain explosive cultural issues largely sidelined or talked around (like Slavery in the 1850’s). The biggest being illegal immigration.
Democrats have changed significantly, from FDR’s elite-led populist coalition to the very elite-led Progressive politics of the 1960’s onward, with a focus on cultural issues of the elite. At the same time as global trade and illegal immigration hammered traditional unions (and Democrats base); cultural concerns (Affirmative Action, Feminism, Gay Rights, the Environment, Anti-Globalism, Anti-War movement, Abortion Rights, etc) took primacy. With the leadership pretty much espousing an elite line of Progressive politics, often led by trust fund or other wealthy people (Soros like financiers, Hollywood celebrities, East Coast heirs, etc.).
Republicans meanwhile, have morphed from “good government” Progressives ala Teddy Roosevelt mixed with business-oriented elitists like Coolidge, Hoover, and Eisenhower to more populist-based leaders and politics like Nixon, Reagan, and GWB. This shows up mostly in their emphasis on populist cultural issues such as gun ownership, military spending and national security posture, and the role of religion in public life.
If you want a historical analogy, the Republicans are the Andrew Jackson Party, and the Democrats the John Quincy Adams Party.
Neither party is interested (so far) in addressing fundamental economic concerns of the middle class, “What’s the Matter with Kansas” or “Nickle and Dimed” overlook the central fact that Democrats are simply not interested in the economic concerns of the middle class and working class: a. restricting illegal immigration to increase working class wages; b. increasing college affordability (instead the Party focuses on Affirmative Action); c. Populist programs aimed at increasing home ownership (instead focusing on cultural issues of the elite). Thus the middle class in the suburbs and exurbs notice the Democrat’s cultural hostility to their concerns (decrying the suburbs and families as “Babbitville” and pushing “edgy urban alternatives” for arty twenty somethings) and edge towards the Republicans more often than not (though culturally the Democrats environmental concerns skew towards families with children).
There seems no siginficant difference between the parties on ideology when it comes to economics, particularly spending, pork, and taxes. We seem drifting, with each party unwilling to risk addressing the core economic decisions and focusing on cultural Progressivism vs. Populism.
As an european living in US I don’t believe that there is much danger that an ideology simmilar to Marxism or Facism will dominate here. The US is much more diverse than Europe, which makes acceptance of an unifying ideology almost impossible. I think we should clarify the meaning of “ideology”, because everyone who is using this word means something slightly different. My understanding of ideology is that it refers to ideas directly related to the form of social institutions. Thus, e.g. even strong anti-abortionist poses little danger as loong as he or she respect the existing democratic institutions and is willing to work within them. The danger of Marxism and Facism was that it destroyed the democratic institutions and replaced it with totalitarian control. Going back to present situation, I think that current development in EU (new constitution) is much more worrisome than the overhyped ascendacy of christian right in US. The new European institutions are being formed in a very non-transparent way, which is potentialy quite dangerous for democracy.
I agree with Jim on many points, with one possible quibble. I think he is correct in his assessment of the Democratic Party, but I think he is wrong with regards to the GOP and economics. The GOP is much more economics orientated, however their economic policy is dominated by the business elite, which also has a considerable say in party affairs. Their interest in economics is solely or mostly directed at that business elite.
What’s the matter with Kansas? Apparently, the memory hole down which the late 70s has gone didn’t reach all the way to Kansas. What in the world does Kansas have against 14% inflation, 20% prime interest rate, 8% unemployment, a military so weak and demoralized that a bunch of savages could hold American citiznens hostage for 444 days, epidemics of venereal disease and unwed pregnancy, degeneration of our educational system to a dangerous point, tripling of the divorce rate, the highest crime rates in over a century, and the highest rates of drug abuse in over a century? Those ignorant rednecks must be completely taken in by the Republican noise machine not to want all that back.
You know, there may be a simpler answer. The U.S. system is designed differently than the European systems, and comes from an underlying culture that’s about a people with a government rather than vice-versa. Etc, etc.
This foundation, plus some historical quirks like the 2 party system, may make America flat-out better at dealing with ideology and incorporating it safely into politics. Certainly better than their continental European counterparts, if the historical record is any indication. This is hardly the first ideological age America has seeen, but somehow it seems to consistently take less hurt from them that Europe.
Perhaps a more productive approach starts by asking: “why is that?”
Well said Fred.
Lefties often talk as if history started yesterday, because that history repeatedly, often by piling up the murdered by the million, has been proven dysfunctional in every case when it otherwise is too busy showing by its mountain of 174 million skulls that its the most evil of all evils the earth has seen so far.
And look at the other fraud, the republican hard money comes in contributions of 50 dollars, the marxocrats, without their confiscated union dues and well healed fat cats they would have no money.
There are concepts that are trancendant, Freedom, Liberty that can qualify as an science because it works, it raises up those living with it to the highest standard of living with more hope and happiness for more people than the planet earth has ever seen.
Whereas leftism is the autopilot to decline dispair, and taken to its unavoidable end, crimes against humanity.
All views are not equal, and the virdict on who has the superior ideas is already in.
All there is left, is the leftover left, in denial of reality.
Two ways to get a man to work for you, a paycheck or a gun to the head.
I would rather be paid.
Joe
Your on target here, I would add that things would be far different if we had the parlementary system.
It would be for the worse.
We dont have confidence votes, and while you do see coalitions, they are not of the same character you see in the parlementary systems.
But even more important than that, is that our constution is almost totaly designed as a limit on power, limits that are being violated by the way, and we aim to restore respect for those limitations.
We have rights, not granted privleges, big difference.
The 2nd amendment is a garranty to the tools to overthrow the goverment.
What other state has an enumerated right to the tools of revolt, right in the consitution ?
Lots of those limits on govt power have broken down, but a large amount remains intact, we are still free, and the breakdown is tolerated because there still exists the mechanisms for the full consitutions restoration.
Gee, am I the only one having trouble taking seriously the notions of any political commentator so naive about American politics that he thinks that Ron Reagan Jr. is now, or ever was, a Republican?
As Peter Drucker pointed out long ago, most Americans share a common ideology. We are not aware of our ideology, like fish are not aware of water.
That’s why he parties can adopt each other’s positions. It’s not that they don’t stand for anything, but that they mostly stand for the same things.
(If you read much history, the position-swapping is quite amazing. 50 years ago the Dems were the anti-abortion party. 100 years ago they were the party of small federal government and state’s rights. And the Republicans were the party of industrial workers…)
Exactly, Rand.
And further to John’s point (#11). If he has trouble seeing how the assimilated immigrant Schwarzenegger can call Austria ‘socialist’, then this is a European fish unable to describe the waters in which he swims. He can only see them in the mirror of America, and he’s telling us more about himself than us.
bq. _”What’s the matter with Kansas?”_
The problem lies within the question. If I understand correctly basically the gist is Kansas (or pick your party) doesn’t believe the way I do so therefore something must be wrong with the opposition.
In truth there is nothing the matter with Kansas, it is neither hostile or totalitarian in it’s manner nor is it alien to the rest of the USA. The rift between the left and right is nothing more than reality versus philosophy. Things look good on paper until it goes haywire. Three roads can be chosen once this happens. Live with it, modify it or abandon it. Reality will give modification the benefit of the doubt or abandon it all together. Philosophy will dictate live with it or modify it but never eliminate it.
It is all ideology, though. In the end, what is the difference between politics and religion?
Both are stongly held ideologies, often not based on rational thought.
The mindsets Levy descibes are all present in cognitive neuroscience– consensus effect, false consensus effect, generation effect, memory illusions, source monitoring defects, confirmation bias, cognitve dissonance reduction. These are departures from normative reasoning, but contribute to what we *believe*. Scientists have actually proved that more bizarre, unnatural ideas, or ideas tipped off of normal, are easier for us to remember.
To me, the important thing is that there are strong, rational idealogues on both sides of the aisle, capable of thought-provoking debate and stirring argument. As a libertarian, _Terri’s Law_ scared the bejasus out of me. A horrific future indeed if there is no strong warrior to stand for the opposition, to hold up the ideologies of the counter-position.
bq. As a libertarian, Terri’s Law scared the bejasus out of me.
And watching the goverment place armed guards around a disabled woman to prevent a piece of ice from being placed to her chapped lips dont bother you.
Those christians who shared the death camp ovens with the jews, those that stood out against the NAZI progroms of Euthenasia et al, why .. they was “scary”. Hitler wont you please do something about them ? after all we passed a law and the NAZI Judges have handed down the decree.
A law in favor of life,, is “Scary”
Favoring Life = “scary”
Thanks Jinn, for the theater of the absurd.
That exact same type of reason gave rise to the mountain of 174 million skulls, its just so perfectly devoid of morality, so wonderfully mechanical, oh so perfectly utilitarian.
Hmmph.
As a libertarian, Terri’s Law scared the bejasus out of me.
A law that sought judicial review of the state’s decision to deprive a helpless woman of her life scared you? As a libertarian? Surely I must be missing something.
well guys, everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll go ride my horse. 😉
Ahh Yes, the true believer
Nice deflection Jinn.
Much to admire about the scientific method, even tho, discovery happening that way is so rare, it reminds us that enshrined procedure is not the way humans operate. (another problem, for leftist dogma).
And even that, exampled by the global warming fraud and marxist economics in western achdemia et al. reminds us how many fields of thought outside of the humanities has been damaged or destroyed by the left. the humanites themselves turned to ashes long ago.
Princton teaches NAZI Bio ethics under Peter Singer, his clones are out on the tube telling everyone the same stuff the NAZI doctors told us in 1940 when they used carbon monoxide because it was “humane” certainly more “humane” than emulating a stranding in the desert, without the sun, so that the agony lasts even longer.
All the nazi arguments, made again, served up new and fresh.
History will look back on todays nazis no more favorably than the last time.