One of the problems is that these “super” lists of enemies change, and change, and change.
I think Paul Gottfried has done a satisfactory job of showing that almost everything “conservatives” claim as part of their “lasting values” now, and often for good reason, and very recently. It’s an embarrassment if you want to stick to the same list of enemies you’d gotten used to, or even if you want to practice the minimal honesty of saying that you were all against X, Y and Z till the party line changed on such and such a date, when yet again the “conservatives” committed and pretended that they had not done so.
Let me give an example of very recent coinage. As a rightie, you got to be against feminists, unless they defined their feminism in some exceptional way, such as “feminists for life” (that is, opposing abortion, the opposite of what feminism usually means). This was fine till after the 9/11 attacks the new owners of conservatism, unsympathetic to traditional Christian values and folk-ways and keen to impose liberalism by force of arms in the Middle East, decided to recruit themselves allies they liked better than the withering tribe of traditionalist Whites. They made a pitch for feminist support, constantly pressing the talking point that Islam is opposed to feminism. (As opposed to us – we are all for it of course, all decent people are!) All loyal supporters of the conservative parties picked up the party line, and hey presto! Within the last few years, feminists moved off the enemies list, and anyone who opposes or did oppose them moved onto the list, but without “conservatives” accepting the obvious implications about themselves and their “bedrock abiding values”.
Stuff and nonsense. I’ve always thought that a culture that can reproduce itself is demonstrating a vital superiority over one that can’t, and if that means praise for Islam and condemnations for our death spiral demographics and the radically corrupted sex-role “reforms” and the “reformers” that gave rise to them, so be it. I have enough real beefs with Islam without inventing fake ones. I’m not going to condemn someone who’s managed the intensely difficult feat of remaining married to one woman and bringing us several decent kids including modest, marriageable girls, in our corrupted and corrupting culture, because his name is “Khalid” and because he worships a barbarous god and is inclined to inflict harm on unbelievers. The people who suddenly appeared on the “friends of true conservatives” lists (an unreciprocated friendship to be sure!) do lots of harm too.
What happens when you simply remember the old script and stick to it? When you notice that no new and better arguments have replaced the old ones, that it has only been a question of a change of “conservative” management, and of allies, tactics and talking points? Then you get read out of the “respectable” ranks of conservatism, and find yourself an “extremist”. And likely sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-environment, and whatever label is next. This is by the standards of respectable, “mainstream” conservatism.
Frankly, I am suspicious of consistent lifelong moderates. Because with the speed that the left ups the price of respectability, and the speed with which the right abandons and reverses “key, unchanging” positions and adds new positions, it takes very tricky footwork of the kind that the “steady, consistent moderate” pretends not to do to remain “moderate”.
I think Paul Gottfried has done a satisfactory job of showing that almost everything “conservatives” claim as part of their “lasting values” now, “conservatives” were dubious about if not hostile to before, and often for good reason, and very recently.
David, your remarks about feminists and conservatives are very strange to me. But you cite Paul Gottfried, and the ideas of the paleoconservatives are very strange to everybody. Let me nail some theses to your door:
1. You don’t have to be a feminist, or even like feminists, in order to believe that women have a right not to be enslaved, stoned, hanged, drenched in acid, or gang-raped by Pakistani tribunals. You don’t even have to be a feminist to believe in the civil equality of women, though some feminists like to pretend that you do.
2. If conservatives and feminists are now allied against Islam, this is news indeed. If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly. And it’s not only “conservatives” who dislike such “feminists”.
3. Some people have been “read out” of “respectable conservatism”, usually for anti-Semitism and other forms of medievalism. That kind of thing is considered unacceptable – shouldn’t it be?
4. Neo-conservatism (which is what Gottfried is complaining about) started out as an effort to stiffen the foreign policy spine of the Democratic Party. (This was an inevitable failure, as no such spine exists.) Neo-conservatives are more liberal on social issues than traditional conservatives – in that area, they shade into the libertarians. On foreign policy, they’re more like the old school Scoop Jackson liberals (who are otherwise extinct). None of which is anything new. Pretending that they’re invaders from Mars doesn’t really help anybody, but then, Gottfried is into fatalism.
5. As you point out (I think) times change, and standing by one set of principles can make you a conservative, a radical, or even a conformist, all in one lifetime. “That’s as it should be.”:http://canisiratus.blogspot.com/2005/01/it-rang-like-it-meant-something.html Abolitionism was pretty extreme in 1850; obviously extremism is not always the worst of everybody’s problems.
Well, I’m going to tentatively agree with David, in that ALL parties change over time, just as the SOCIETY changes over time. If you looked at early 1900’s Democrats, they would not agree much with today’s democrats, or with 1800’s democrats (and same for Republicans). I shouldn’t have to answer for (or take credit for) Polk’s candidacy, just because he once had a D on his name. I doubt we would agree on much.
This is not ‘being hypocritical’, it’s just new blood and new political forces recreating party lines. One of the reasons I don’t like parties is their creation of uneasy alliances into groupthink. This obscures complicated topics into yes/no strong/weak talking points that undermines the idea of independent thought. In the end, people are shocked, SHOCKED when entirely different wings of the same party disagree.
On a side note, I imagine everybody sees this video as funny, because nobody sees these traits in themselves (or their political cohorts). Getting people to recognize extremism in their own wing is very, very hard.
_What happens when you simply remember the old script and stick to it?_
Well, 99 times out of 100, you end up living in a well-discarded past.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the old script was the original Constitution, unmodified by abolition, civil rights, women’s right to vote and a number of other significant changes.
Even what once seemed to be bedrock absolute foundational principles do change over time and usually with good reason: progress.
If you were to divide the whole of human history into 100,000 discrete pieces each representing a particular generation in a particular part of the world, there would be no more than 2 or 3 that I would prefer to live in than the current one pretty much anywhere in the “West.” Because from a moral (& technological) point of view, the past pretty much sucks compared with the present.
“If you were to divide the whole of human history into 100,000 discrete pieces each representing a particular generation in a particular part of the world.”
I havent’ thought of this particular division of time before. If we start counting at the “earliest human fossils”:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223122209.htm/, i.e 197,000 years ago, and we assume a generation to be 15 years, that means slightly over 13,000 generations. [18 years, then 11,000 generations]
The bulk of that time though, Roland, would fall into the pre-history category. If history begins with written records, we’re talking about a total period of 5,500-6,500 years. But each generation would be divided into geographic divisions, of which there could be a nearly infinite number.
For instance, I don’t think I’d mind living in 388 b.c. if it were in Athens. Not so sure I’d be quite as willing to live during the same period in Chad. Not sure I’d want to live in Chad right now, for that matter. Of course, I wouldn’t want to live in 388 b.c. Athens either, if I were a woman, or a house slave, or an attractive young boy; only as a disgruntled older playwright.
When there’s a lot of this going on, when the parties are moving fast and the gap between who and what they were supposed to stand for and what the guiding circles of the party and its big money supporters and its academic and media supporters actually want and are going for get big enough, then all you need to become an “extremist” is not to be in on the scam and to be a loser from the scam sufficiently painfully that you belly-ache in public about it.
I lived in Australia during Wran’s Premiership. I remember running into him in a bookstore and being taken by the fact that those in power were not as estranged from the every day life of the people in Australia as they were in the U.S. His politics made no difference to me, but the fact that he could walk among the common folk without anyone taking too much notice did.
But, times do change. I do think it is good for you to point out that politicians are whores and seem to be prostituting themselves now, more than they have in quite a while.
I also share your concern about Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. But, I am old and the world is not mine any more.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “And now for something completely different …”
OK. 🙂
#4 from Glen Wishard: “David, your remarks about feminists and conservatives are very strange to me. But you cite Paul Gottfried, and the ideas of the paleoconservatives are very strange to everybody.”
They are becoming less strange to me now than a mainstream that effectively ignores Mark Steyn’s basic, vital points on demographics. I haven’t read much on “paleoconservatives” yet, but I don’t see how they could be stranger than an affected indifference to artificial infertility, mass immigration, radicalizing multiculturalism, population replacement and their consequences.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “Let me nail some theses to your door:”
OK. (David Blue hands over hammer and nails.)
#4 from Glen Wishard: “1. You don’t have to be a feminist, or even like feminists, in order to believe that women have a right not to be enslaved, stoned, hanged, drenched in acid, or gang-raped by Pakistani tribunals. You don’t even have to be a feminist to believe in the civil equality of women, though some feminists like to pretend that you do.”
OK.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “2. If conservatives and feminists are now allied against Islam, this is news indeed. If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly. And it’s not only “conservatives” who dislike such “feminists”.”
Conservatives and feminists are not now allied against Islam. Rather, right-wingers who desired such an alliance changed their talking points but got no joy.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “3. Some people have been “read out” of “respectable conservatism”, usually for anti-Semitism and other forms of medievalism. That kind of thing is considered unacceptable – shouldn’t it be?”
I’m on the brink of saying: it shouldn’t be.
I haven’t read enough on “paleoconservativism” (if that’s a word?) to say that yet, though. I don’t know what weird doctrines I might find myself unexpectedly defending as deserving a place in the sun. I am not up on conspiracy theories regarding Masons, fluoridation and precious bodily fluids, if those are relevant.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “4. […] but then, Gottfried is into fatalism.”
Currently, a lot of things are looking pretty inevitable to me too.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “5. As you point out (I think) times change, and standing by one set of principles can make you a conservative, a radical, or even a conformist, all in one lifetime.”
Yes, it was my intention to point that out.
It followed that John Cleese was wrong to say that extremism is just about being nasty and feeling good about it. Standing where you stood last year can make you an extremist.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “That’s as it should be. Abolitionism was pretty extreme in 1850; obviously extremism is not always the worst of everybody’s problems.”
True.
But how society changed so that the same guy with the same position who was once “tolerant” is now “extremist” and a bigot in an interesting question. The John Cleese line – effectively “don’t listen to extremists, they’re evil and have no real ideas” doesn’t cut it.
Rather than putting “extremism” down to random villainy and bad temperament, I’d say: look at the class, race, gender and other status markers of the people who are constantly getting wrong-footed such that they become “extremists” (though their opinions may not have changed at all), and compare that to the people the people who are getting to stay respectably moderate (though their expressed opinions must have changed radically).
“Extremists should be stigmatized and a deaf ear should be turned to their arguments” – without any investigation of where this label is coming from, and who it sticks to and who gets to be teflon – is not neutral or random in its targeting.
I don’t mean to discredit paleocons just for being paleocons, and I didn’t mean to call your grandmother a medievalist.
The paleocons hail some great writers: Robert Nisbet, Michael Oakeshott, and Russell Kirk. And you’ve got to love a political movement that draws inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft – talk about fatalism.
But it’s funny that they should come up in this discussion, because some of the people who call themselves paleocons are the biggest drawers-up of enemies lists that you ever saw. At the top of the list are American Jews – you know, Zionists. Zionists, Zionists, Zionists, and more Zionists. And like all Zionist-haters, they claim the Zionists singled them out first.
Now the left hates all conservatives, neo, paleo, crunchy, vanilla, and chocolate. They hate all libertarians, too. But some paleocons get friendly nods from the intellectual left, because they buy into the whole leftist claptrap about US Imperialism, and because they hate Israel. So they get to participate in extremism on both ends.
Hmm, there’s a problem with my timeline. That is, the floodgates for culturally indigestible mass immigration opened in America in 1965, that’s before the corrosive effect of family “reform” could have created a problem for this to be the solution to.
My impression that the true governors of the state and thus society are very narrow elite and that they act like experimenters with little concern for the welfare of the patient they are experimenting on remains.
buddy larsen at Belmont Club said what I want to say: “boys at play throw stones at frogs, frogs die in earnest.” (link)
When this is happening, there are worse things for a man’s soul than to depart so far from the mainstream of political fashion that you are called an “extremist”.
The depressing part: You can show an extremist the video. They will laugh at it. Then proceed to say things that show they are still running the same tape, utterly unaffected by the video they just laughed at. Tried the experiment.
*Now the left hates all conservatives, neo, paleo, crunchy, vanilla, and chocolate. They hate all libertarians, too.*
As a ‘leftist’, I don’t hate righties, I just don’t agree with them very often. I do hate some of them (mostly, the ones who write books calling me Hitler/idiot/Islamic appeaser). I actually am quite fond of libertarians, and I dig the whole libertarian vibe. I vote for many of them in local elections.
Now, there are some liberals who hate all righties. Just as there some righties who hate all liberals. Everybody knows who I’m talking about here. These are the people I put into the ‘extremist’ camps, the people who openly advocate for a good purge….
*What I see is a process of politically and legally driven top-down radical social change*
I would agree there’s alot of that. Some directed by the parties, alot directed from corporations (that have a wider reach these days than either party) But even these have changed dramatically as business and technology has changed. In many ways it’s made the corruption worse.
*If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly.*
This is totally off topic, but, as someone who hangs out with a lot of feminists, it’s stupidly untrue. For example here’s “NOW”:http://www.now.org/lists/now-action-list/msg00394.html trying to get help for Afghan women. Here is a “Ms magazine”:http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/category/global/middle-east/ page dedicated to the middle east.
Now, I don’t agree with everything on these pages, but you’ll find very few of the articles are “silent” on Islamic issues.
You’re not a leftist, Alchemist. You’re just a liberal. In fact, confusion about the difference between leftists and liberals is proof that you’re a liberal.
For example here’s NOW trying to get help for Afghan women. Here is a Ms magazine page dedicated to the middle east.
The NOW page you link to describes women who are victimized by “extreme poverty”, “gender-based violence”, and “religious extremists”. This seems to be caused by the fact that Afghanistan is “war-torn” – I wonder who’s to blame for that.
Islam and Shari’a are not mentioned of course. They do utter the word “Taliban”, which they are familiar with because they habitually apply it to Republicans.
The Ms. blog is topped by two stories about genital mutilation (FGM) – so common it has an a initialism. Search these stories for possible causes of FGM. If Catholics practiced FGM, do you think they might mention the Catholic Church?
Below that you find a tribute to Rachel Corrie, to Hissa Hilal (“a feminist jihadist of the highest order”) and a call for “Waging a Worldwide Feminist Jihad”.
Glen, you’re cherry-picking here, there’s only one line in NOW that mentions poverty, and the rest is entirely focused on religious persecution:
From the NOW page:
bq. Afghan women face violence and intimidation in their everyday lives. Oppression of women has increased recently as a result of the resurgence of the Taliban and other religious extremists. These groups have been responsible for scores of attacks against school girls and teachers to prevent them from obtaining an education.
They’re clearly talking about persecution of women by extremists (not by the US). Even the mention of words “war-torn” are not used as blame of the US, but of the fact that our efforts have not been enough to help women succeed. Based on the status of the country, that’s an accurate statement.
*If Catholics practiced FGM, do you think they might mention the Catholic Church?*
Gee, I’d certainly hope so. FGM is a rather extreme position, used only by groups who feel that women are not allowed basic rights and privileges.
I could go through all of these, but we’re getting off the point. To rope this back in:
Where I think you disagree is the feminist approach to dealing with extremism (something this post has not tackled). Most groups advocate awareness, fund raising and support. Most feminist groups see violence (even against oppression) as counterproductive.
So to come back to the post: Clearly, joking with extremists about their views does not crack their shell. So how should extremists be approached? Is there a way to bring them back into the conventional fold. Or, is extremism a natural by-product of freedom?
When approaching 3rd world nations, how can extremism be tackled across cultures?
One of the problems is that these “super” lists of enemies change, and change, and change.
I think Paul Gottfried has done a satisfactory job of showing that almost everything “conservatives” claim as part of their “lasting values” now, and often for good reason, and very recently. It’s an embarrassment if you want to stick to the same list of enemies you’d gotten used to, or even if you want to practice the minimal honesty of saying that you were all against X, Y and Z till the party line changed on such and such a date, when yet again the “conservatives” committed and pretended that they had not done so.
Let me give an example of very recent coinage. As a rightie, you got to be against feminists, unless they defined their feminism in some exceptional way, such as “feminists for life” (that is, opposing abortion, the opposite of what feminism usually means). This was fine till after the 9/11 attacks the new owners of conservatism, unsympathetic to traditional Christian values and folk-ways and keen to impose liberalism by force of arms in the Middle East, decided to recruit themselves allies they liked better than the withering tribe of traditionalist Whites. They made a pitch for feminist support, constantly pressing the talking point that Islam is opposed to feminism. (As opposed to us – we are all for it of course, all decent people are!) All loyal supporters of the conservative parties picked up the party line, and hey presto! Within the last few years, feminists moved off the enemies list, and anyone who opposes or did oppose them moved onto the list, but without “conservatives” accepting the obvious implications about themselves and their “bedrock abiding values”.
Stuff and nonsense. I’ve always thought that a culture that can reproduce itself is demonstrating a vital superiority over one that can’t, and if that means praise for Islam and condemnations for our death spiral demographics and the radically corrupted sex-role “reforms” and the “reformers” that gave rise to them, so be it. I have enough real beefs with Islam without inventing fake ones. I’m not going to condemn someone who’s managed the intensely difficult feat of remaining married to one woman and bringing us several decent kids including modest, marriageable girls, in our corrupted and corrupting culture, because his name is “Khalid” and because he worships a barbarous god and is inclined to inflict harm on unbelievers. The people who suddenly appeared on the “friends of true conservatives” lists (an unreciprocated friendship to be sure!) do lots of harm too.
What happens when you simply remember the old script and stick to it? When you notice that no new and better arguments have replaced the old ones, that it has only been a question of a change of “conservative” management, and of allies, tactics and talking points? Then you get read out of the “respectable” ranks of conservatism, and find yourself an “extremist”. And likely sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-environment, and whatever label is next. This is by the standards of respectable, “mainstream” conservatism.
Frankly, I am suspicious of consistent lifelong moderates. Because with the speed that the left ups the price of respectability, and the speed with which the right abandons and reverses “key, unchanging” positions and adds new positions, it takes very tricky footwork of the kind that the “steady, consistent moderate” pretends not to do to remain “moderate”.
I think Paul Gottfried has done a satisfactory job of showing that almost everything “conservatives” claim as part of their “lasting values” now, “conservatives” were dubious about if not hostile to before, and often for good reason, and very recently.
And now for something completely different …
David, your remarks about feminists and conservatives are very strange to me. But you cite Paul Gottfried, and the ideas of the paleoconservatives are very strange to everybody. Let me nail some theses to your door:
1. You don’t have to be a feminist, or even like feminists, in order to believe that women have a right not to be enslaved, stoned, hanged, drenched in acid, or gang-raped by Pakistani tribunals. You don’t even have to be a feminist to believe in the civil equality of women, though some feminists like to pretend that you do.
2. If conservatives and feminists are now allied against Islam, this is news indeed. If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly. And it’s not only “conservatives” who dislike such “feminists”.
3. Some people have been “read out” of “respectable conservatism”, usually for anti-Semitism and other forms of medievalism. That kind of thing is considered unacceptable – shouldn’t it be?
4. Neo-conservatism (which is what Gottfried is complaining about) started out as an effort to stiffen the foreign policy spine of the Democratic Party. (This was an inevitable failure, as no such spine exists.) Neo-conservatives are more liberal on social issues than traditional conservatives – in that area, they shade into the libertarians. On foreign policy, they’re more like the old school Scoop Jackson liberals (who are otherwise extinct). None of which is anything new. Pretending that they’re invaders from Mars doesn’t really help anybody, but then, Gottfried is into fatalism.
5. As you point out (I think) times change, and standing by one set of principles can make you a conservative, a radical, or even a conformist, all in one lifetime. “That’s as it should be.”:http://canisiratus.blogspot.com/2005/01/it-rang-like-it-meant-something.html Abolitionism was pretty extreme in 1850; obviously extremism is not always the worst of everybody’s problems.
Well, I’m going to tentatively agree with David, in that ALL parties change over time, just as the SOCIETY changes over time. If you looked at early 1900’s Democrats, they would not agree much with today’s democrats, or with 1800’s democrats (and same for Republicans). I shouldn’t have to answer for (or take credit for) Polk’s candidacy, just because he once had a D on his name. I doubt we would agree on much.
This is not ‘being hypocritical’, it’s just new blood and new political forces recreating party lines. One of the reasons I don’t like parties is their creation of uneasy alliances into groupthink. This obscures complicated topics into yes/no strong/weak talking points that undermines the idea of independent thought. In the end, people are shocked, SHOCKED when entirely different wings of the same party disagree.
On a side note, I imagine everybody sees this video as funny, because nobody sees these traits in themselves (or their political cohorts). Getting people to recognize extremism in their own wing is very, very hard.
_What happens when you simply remember the old script and stick to it?_
Well, 99 times out of 100, you end up living in a well-discarded past.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the old script was the original Constitution, unmodified by abolition, civil rights, women’s right to vote and a number of other significant changes.
Even what once seemed to be bedrock absolute foundational principles do change over time and usually with good reason: progress.
If you were to divide the whole of human history into 100,000 discrete pieces each representing a particular generation in a particular part of the world, there would be no more than 2 or 3 that I would prefer to live in than the current one pretty much anywhere in the “West.” Because from a moral (& technological) point of view, the past pretty much sucks compared with the present.
I havent’ thought of this particular division of time before. If we start counting at the “earliest human fossils”:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223122209.htm/, i.e 197,000 years ago, and we assume a generation to be 15 years, that means slightly over 13,000 generations. [18 years, then 11,000 generations]
The bulk of that time though, Roland, would fall into the pre-history category. If history begins with written records, we’re talking about a total period of 5,500-6,500 years. But each generation would be divided into geographic divisions, of which there could be a nearly infinite number.
For instance, I don’t think I’d mind living in 388 b.c. if it were in Athens. Not so sure I’d be quite as willing to live during the same period in Chad. Not sure I’d want to live in Chad right now, for that matter. Of course, I wouldn’t want to live in 388 b.c. Athens either, if I were a woman, or a house slave, or an attractive young boy; only as a disgruntled older playwright.
When there’s a lot of this going on, when the parties are moving fast and the gap between who and what they were supposed to stand for and what the guiding circles of the party and its big money supporters and its academic and media supporters actually want and are going for get big enough, then all you need to become an “extremist” is not to be in on the scam and to be a loser from the scam sufficiently painfully that you belly-ache in public about it.
I lived in Australia during Wran’s Premiership. I remember running into him in a bookstore and being taken by the fact that those in power were not as estranged from the every day life of the people in Australia as they were in the U.S. His politics made no difference to me, but the fact that he could walk among the common folk without anyone taking too much notice did.
But, times do change. I do think it is good for you to point out that politicians are whores and seem to be prostituting themselves now, more than they have in quite a while.
I also share your concern about Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. But, I am old and the world is not mine any more.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “And now for something completely different …”
OK. 🙂
#4 from Glen Wishard: “David, your remarks about feminists and conservatives are very strange to me. But you cite Paul Gottfried, and the ideas of the paleoconservatives are very strange to everybody.”
They are becoming less strange to me now than a mainstream that effectively ignores Mark Steyn’s basic, vital points on demographics. I haven’t read much on “paleoconservatives” yet, but I don’t see how they could be stranger than an affected indifference to artificial infertility, mass immigration, radicalizing multiculturalism, population replacement and their consequences.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “Let me nail some theses to your door:”
OK. (David Blue hands over hammer and nails.)
#4 from Glen Wishard: “1. You don’t have to be a feminist, or even like feminists, in order to believe that women have a right not to be enslaved, stoned, hanged, drenched in acid, or gang-raped by Pakistani tribunals. You don’t even have to be a feminist to believe in the civil equality of women, though some feminists like to pretend that you do.”
OK.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “2. If conservatives and feminists are now allied against Islam, this is news indeed. If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly. And it’s not only “conservatives” who dislike such “feminists”.”
Conservatives and feminists are not now allied against Islam. Rather, right-wingers who desired such an alliance changed their talking points but got no joy.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “3. Some people have been “read out” of “respectable conservatism”, usually for anti-Semitism and other forms of medievalism. That kind of thing is considered unacceptable – shouldn’t it be?”
I’m on the brink of saying: it shouldn’t be.
I haven’t read enough on “paleoconservativism” (if that’s a word?) to say that yet, though. I don’t know what weird doctrines I might find myself unexpectedly defending as deserving a place in the sun. I am not up on conspiracy theories regarding Masons, fluoridation and precious bodily fluids, if those are relevant.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “4. […] but then, Gottfried is into fatalism.”
Currently, a lot of things are looking pretty inevitable to me too.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “5. As you point out (I think) times change, and standing by one set of principles can make you a conservative, a radical, or even a conformist, all in one lifetime.”
Yes, it was my intention to point that out.
It followed that John Cleese was wrong to say that extremism is just about being nasty and feeling good about it. Standing where you stood last year can make you an extremist.
#4 from Glen Wishard: “That’s as it should be. Abolitionism was pretty extreme in 1850; obviously extremism is not always the worst of everybody’s problems.”
True.
But how society changed so that the same guy with the same position who was once “tolerant” is now “extremist” and a bigot in an interesting question. The John Cleese line – effectively “don’t listen to extremists, they’re evil and have no real ideas” doesn’t cut it.
Rather than putting “extremism” down to random villainy and bad temperament, I’d say: look at the class, race, gender and other status markers of the people who are constantly getting wrong-footed such that they become “extremists” (though their opinions may not have changed at all), and compare that to the people the people who are getting to stay respectably moderate (though their expressed opinions must have changed radically).
“Extremists should be stigmatized and a deaf ear should be turned to their arguments” – without any investigation of where this label is coming from, and who it sticks to and who gets to be teflon – is not neutral or random in its targeting.
I really like this line of discussion, let me sleep on it.
David –
I don’t mean to discredit paleocons just for being paleocons, and I didn’t mean to call your grandmother a medievalist.
The paleocons hail some great writers: Robert Nisbet, Michael Oakeshott, and Russell Kirk. And you’ve got to love a political movement that draws inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft – talk about fatalism.
But it’s funny that they should come up in this discussion, because some of the people who call themselves paleocons are the biggest drawers-up of enemies lists that you ever saw. At the top of the list are American Jews – you know, Zionists. Zionists, Zionists, Zionists, and more Zionists. And like all Zionist-haters, they claim the Zionists singled them out first.
Now the left hates all conservatives, neo, paleo, crunchy, vanilla, and chocolate. They hate all libertarians, too. But some paleocons get friendly nods from the intellectual left, because they buy into the whole leftist claptrap about US Imperialism, and because they hate Israel. So they get to participate in extremism on both ends.
And they watched the John Cleese video… and there was much rejoicing.
Hmm, there’s a problem with my timeline. That is, the floodgates for culturally indigestible mass immigration opened in America in 1965, that’s before the corrosive effect of family “reform” could have created a problem for this to be the solution to.
My impression that the true governors of the state and thus society are very narrow elite and that they act like experimenters with little concern for the welfare of the patient they are experimenting on remains.
buddy larsen at Belmont Club said what I want to say: “boys at play throw stones at frogs, frogs die in earnest.” (link)
When this is happening, there are worse things for a man’s soul than to depart so far from the mainstream of political fashion that you are called an “extremist”.
The depressing part: You can show an extremist the video. They will laugh at it. Then proceed to say things that show they are still running the same tape, utterly unaffected by the video they just laughed at. Tried the experiment.
Joe:
Before the discussion, shouldn’t you show them the John Cleese “Argument Clinic” sketch?
Some responses to individual statements…
*Now the left hates all conservatives, neo, paleo, crunchy, vanilla, and chocolate. They hate all libertarians, too.*
As a ‘leftist’, I don’t hate righties, I just don’t agree with them very often. I do hate some of them (mostly, the ones who write books calling me Hitler/idiot/Islamic appeaser). I actually am quite fond of libertarians, and I dig the whole libertarian vibe. I vote for many of them in local elections.
Now, there are some liberals who hate all righties. Just as there some righties who hate all liberals. Everybody knows who I’m talking about here. These are the people I put into the ‘extremist’ camps, the people who openly advocate for a good purge….
*What I see is a process of politically and legally driven top-down radical social change*
I would agree there’s alot of that. Some directed by the parties, alot directed from corporations (that have a wider reach these days than either party) But even these have changed dramatically as business and technology has changed. In many ways it’s made the corruption worse.
*If anything, the cowardly silence of feminism in the face of Islamist terror against women has made them less friendly.*
This is totally off topic, but, as someone who hangs out with a lot of feminists, it’s stupidly untrue. For example here’s “NOW”:http://www.now.org/lists/now-action-list/msg00394.html trying to get help for Afghan women. Here is a “Ms magazine”:http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/category/global/middle-east/ page dedicated to the middle east.
Now, I don’t agree with everything on these pages, but you’ll find very few of the articles are “silent” on Islamic issues.
Alchemist:
You’re not a leftist, Alchemist. You’re just a liberal. In fact, confusion about the difference between leftists and liberals is proof that you’re a liberal.
The NOW page you link to describes women who are victimized by “extreme poverty”, “gender-based violence”, and “religious extremists”. This seems to be caused by the fact that Afghanistan is “war-torn” – I wonder who’s to blame for that.
Islam and Shari’a are not mentioned of course. They do utter the word “Taliban”, which they are familiar with because they habitually apply it to Republicans.
The Ms. blog is topped by two stories about genital mutilation (FGM) – so common it has an a initialism. Search these stories for possible causes of FGM. If Catholics practiced FGM, do you think they might mention the Catholic Church?
Below that you find a tribute to Rachel Corrie, to Hissa Hilal (“a feminist jihadist of the highest order”) and a call for “Waging a Worldwide Feminist Jihad”.
Glen, you’re cherry-picking here, there’s only one line in NOW that mentions poverty, and the rest is entirely focused on religious persecution:
From the NOW page:
bq. Afghan women face violence and intimidation in their everyday lives. Oppression of women has increased recently as a result of the resurgence of the Taliban and other religious extremists. These groups have been responsible for scores of attacks against school girls and teachers to prevent them from obtaining an education.
They’re clearly talking about persecution of women by extremists (not by the US). Even the mention of words “war-torn” are not used as blame of the US, but of the fact that our efforts have not been enough to help women succeed. Based on the status of the country, that’s an accurate statement.
*If Catholics practiced FGM, do you think they might mention the Catholic Church?*
Gee, I’d certainly hope so. FGM is a rather extreme position, used only by groups who feel that women are not allowed basic rights and privileges.
I could go through all of these, but we’re getting off the point. To rope this back in:
Where I think you disagree is the feminist approach to dealing with extremism (something this post has not tackled). Most groups advocate awareness, fund raising and support. Most feminist groups see violence (even against oppression) as counterproductive.
So to come back to the post: Clearly, joking with extremists about their views does not crack their shell. So how should extremists be approached? Is there a way to bring them back into the conventional fold. Or, is extremism a natural by-product of freedom?
When approaching 3rd world nations, how can extremism be tackled across cultures?
Sorry, I meant:
Most [feminist] groups advocate awareness, fund-raising and [financial] support.