The other day I said:
I begin to get a new way of parsing contemporary politics, and an explanation of why the conservatives in power now are really liberals in disguise.
I expected a bigger response to this, but figure I may as well just jump into what I see as a new taxonomy of current American politics.
I’ll start by setting out four of the corners:
– Romantic Liberals
– Classical Liberals
– Classical Conservatives
– Romantic Conservatives…
I’ll try and explain what these are one by one, but I figure I’ll have some fun with y’all and start with the one guaranteed to make folk’s eyes bug out.
Romantic Conservatives – and why it is that the GOP today is really not conservative. Today, the GOP is pretty squarely in this camp. Why do I call them Romantic?
Because they are in thrall to an ideology almost as fantasy-driven as Al-Quieda’s. It projects a fantasy of an economic America of limited government and yeomen entrepreneurs running small businesses, and a social America that looks like the television shows of the 1950’s. Neither one reflects any kind of real American history any more than Qutb’s fantasy connects to real Middle Eastern history – instead they are references to a series of Chamber of Commerce pamphlets and old situation comedies.
And the concrete policies they choose completely undermine the fantasy – another characteristic of Romantic politics. The centerpieces of Bush’s economic policy, if you look at them carefully, don’t benefit small business, professionals, or small entrepreneurs. The impact of these incentives is as targeted as a JDAM, and it is on the large corporations who make up the GOP’s core constituency.
It assumes that the best way to promote small business is to … give tax breaks and shift policies in favor of big businesses and big investors, thereby accelerating the concentration of economic power – which means shuttering the small businesses as they go under. It assures us that the best way to preserve our way of life is to … deprive us of the liberties and the equality before law that are central to it. In essence, GOP policies are aimed at using the power of the State to reward those who they think should be rewarded and enforce their ideals of human behavior…one of the basic definitions of liberalism, no?
Note that a different set of large corporations and institutions make up the Democrat’s core constituencies, and their policies are similarly targeted in denial of their stated ideology. We’ll get to them later.
Intriguing. I can’t wait to see the rest…
No. it’s one of the basic definitions of statism. I think we have a terminology problem here, because some of the terms you use have very specific political philosophy meanings that clash with the ones you’re giving them.
The result puts cracks all over your theses.
Classical Liberalism, which the neocon political view approaches very closely, is exactly the reverse of what you describe; a “not for the government to pick winners or impose its conception of the good” philosophy. No Democrat I can think of is a classical liberal, or anything close. It IS a widely accepted political philosophy term, and it means something very specific that has no relationship to Tip O’Neil.
The moral angle of enforcing ideals of human behaviour is part of any healthy polis, but is given special emphasis by the people political philosophy knows as “Classical Conservatives.” To make life even more fun, the American version of that species is very different from the European version because it defends/conserves a fundamentally liberal (as in, Classical Liberal) social order. If you’re going to crawl into their heads effectively, that psychic cleavage is an important starting point.
So, the GOP is made up of classical liberals, AND classical conservatives. Some people use “economic concservative” and “social conservative” as shorthand.
What keeps them together is the common perception that statist leftism is the problem. CLs see it as a drag on the economy, prone to bloat and abuses of authority, and given powers by its size that attract corruption. CCs see it as a directly hostile force attacking their values and communities. Some wish to remove the state and leave individual communities to govern themselves in local wisdom, other CCs have no problem with these powers but would use them differently. Romantic tendencies are definitely stronger in the CC camp, but the match is not always true. What is true, is that Romanticism as a philosophy is very rare on the CL side.
This all needs to be sorted out before classifying the right-wing side of American politics, and some of the arguments do need to be presented more fairly. The cleavages on the Left are equally real, of course, and will no doubt get their own treatment.
Also, if you’re going to use a 2×2 matrix structure, shouldn’t you tell us the axes?
AL: “In essence, GOP policies are aimed at using the power of the State to reward those who they think should be rewarded and enforce their ideals of human behavior.. one of the basic definitions of liberalism, no?”
Joe: You’re absolutely right that I’ve appropriated terms and probably should have either explained what I was doing more fully or used other terms.
But I think you’re completely wrong when you define the right wing of U.S. politics as an admixture of ‘Classical Liberals’ in the Lockean sense and ‘Classical Conservatives’ a la Montesquieu. That grouping would be what I was going to classify as ‘Classical Conservatives’.
I could replace the term ‘Romantic Conservatives’ with ‘Statist Conservatives’, but that misses the notion I’m trying to get across.
The core ideologies of the dominant wing of the GOP are based in fantasies of what America was. And the policies they connect to them have a symbolic – hence Romantic – connection to their ideologies.
This process closely parallels the fantasy ideology of the Islamists, and the largely symbolic means that they have attempted to use to attain them.
A.L.
“give tax breaks and shift policies in favor of big businesses and big investors, thereby accelerating the concentration of economic power – which means shuttering the small businesses as they go under.”
Where in GOP policy do you see this?
The president’s tax plan is to lower income taxes for all brackets and generally conservatives are for less gov’t control/interference in people’s lives.
Joe,
I was going to chime in here but you have said it so much better than I could.
I think the real fracture point in politics in America today is what I call the radical center. You alluded to this when you mentioned statism.
The radical center says out of my bedroom and out of my wallet.
On either side of this center you have the statist: the country will not work properly without a lot of government intervention in xxxxxx. What xxxxxx is depends on whether you are right or left.
My thesis is that the socialist left is dying. That leaves the liberals and conservatives – we are back to the original meaning of those terms since socialism is no longer viable for the left.
The real liberals of the future will be quite close to what we call today libertarians. The foreign policy will be agressively limited government militant democrat.
What will be left is the fight over things like drug prohibition, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. Economics and foreign policy will be argued at the margins as in the cold war but major disagreements will not appear.
In essence for the term of the war against the militant nihilists we will have a national unity government. Similar to what was had during the cold war.
You can see this in faint outline because people are calling for governmental fiscal discipline with an aggressively democratic (no more despots) foreign policy.
The other good point is that Santorum got relatively little traction for his calls to put gays under the thumb of the law. It shows we are learning the lessons of Germany 1933 – 45 and Jim Crow America.
Which means I expect the liberals to be ascendant for the next 50 to 100 years.
The socialist left and the cultural conservative right are both romantic.
The cultural conservatives want what never was, the socialists want what never will be.
That is why they are statists. What they want does not arise out of the natural experience of men/women.
The politics of the future will revolve around the libertarian middle – the “leave me alone” guys. The cultural conservatives to a certain extent can live with them. After all it was Jesus who said: “let he who is without sin….”.
The socialists absolutely cannot live without state intervention.
What you see now in terms of the long march through the system is the peak of socialism/Marxism. They are having trouble gathering new recruits. Fox TV’s rise is a harbinger.
M. Simon:
“The socialist left and the cultural conservative right are both romantic.
The cultural conservatives want what never was, the socialists want what never will be.
That is why they are statists. What they want does not arise out of the natural experience of men/women.” Yes!! Abso-damn-lutely right.
My only quibble is that I would find other adjectives than ‘socialist’ and ‘cultural’; the issues blur past those two descriptions…
A.L.
AL:
So, with four dominant ideologies and only two parties, what is the glue that holds the parties together?
More specifically, do variant ideologies coalesce into a party (as calculated compromise) or emerge from within as time changes? I surmise both—that the makeup of the Democratic and Republican parties as they now exist are the result of waves of coalescence and divergence.
I also suspect that ideological incoherence in each party (particularly ideologically indefensible policy-making) often results when leaders attempt to retain some group that coalesced with the party in the past for a now-irrelevant reason.
The two-party system is so entrenched, that it is easier to imagine evolution within the parties (and party-swapping by voters) than the emergence of a new predominant party. (For similar reasons, long-standing third parties (libertarians, socialists) tend to be very ideological.)
So, I suppose I’m inviting you to speculate on how the makeup of each party may shift in the future and how the parties will shift focus in order to retain unity.
Nathan:
I tend to think of the parties more as instutional frameworks…of activits, fundraisers, and electoral technicians than as ideological associations.
Imagine a semi-permanent, ideology-less infrastructure with a constantly changing ideological scrim in front of it.
Let me think about this a little more…
A.L.
I like your 2×2 analysis and look forward to the future segments, but I wish you would put a little more explicit definition ito your four categories, especially Romantic and Classical. It seems that Romantic only has the connotation of fantasy for you, where historically it has glorified the individual and the “folk”. Fascism is the usual exemplar of Romantic politics.
A.L. — there really are romantic conservatives in American politics; Patrick Buchanan and Trent Lott both wish to restore an imagined past. But they are not the dominant wing of the GOP; they are tolerated and sometimes rebuked.
Also, the “fantasy” you describe is, in fact, the dream world of classic liberals — the world that Locke and Montesquieu would have thought ideal. If that is “romantic”, what would you consider classical?
A.L.
Repeat after me, “The Republicans and conservatives are not monolithic.” Neo-cons, Paleo-cons, and hyphenated cons of every sort are all resident in the Republican party.
Like most liberals you fixate on the social conservatives — you call them “romantic” –because they are your boogie men.
Jerry Pournelle’s two axis political model has been out there for years and works better than the one you posit. Statism versus rationalism were the axis and this is the link:
http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm
Point in fact, the real problem in American politics today is that National Democrats are monolithic. And on issues of American national security they are what California Republicans are to abortion — hopeless losers.
It also doesn’t help that Modern Democrats go insane when they are out of power.
The problem is that the Parties are no longer the place where factions work out who is going to be the candidate for the party. The emergence of primaries made moneymen, pollsters and the D.C. gate keepers far more important than the party rank and file.
The result is the parties are becoming shrinking mono-cultures driven by money and small vote count primaries.
This is surprisingly less of a problem for Republicans than the Democrats for two reasons.
First, because Republicans have a large base of small “subscription” contributors that balance the “deep pockets,” so they have a wider base of people candidates need to be responsible too. Small businessmen, other than trial lawyers, are overwhelmingly Republican and this is where it shows.
Democrats, OTOH, are disproportionately dependent in the primaries on a few deep pockets who are to the left of the party base, let alone the general voting public. This has shown up in Lieberman’s fundraising, specifically in its lack.
The second reason Republicans are less monoculture is due to two accidents of leadership. The Republicans bottomed out in 1992 and have since lucked out with two major party building national leaders. Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush are both once a generation national party builders and they literally showed up back to back.
Democrats on the other hand had President Clinton, who destroyed the Congressional wing of the party.
Now the Democrats have nothing and the central issue in national politics is the one issue this generation of National Democratics cannot engage on. 9/11 was a searing paradigm shift in American culture that the Democrats are on the wrong side of, I just don’t see them being competative for the Presidency until 2016 at the earliest.
Trent:
I’d never suggest that “all Republicans are the same” any more that I think you’re suggesting that “all Democrats are the same”. I do think that it’s useful to talk about commonalities and themes of complex systems, rather than simply pointing out that they’re complex.
And I think that there are themes within modern American politics which need to be talked about; and it’s only by a kind of gross oversimplification that we can do so. That doesn’t mean that the oversimplifications can’t be useful, or that we shouldn;t be mindful of what they are.
As far as the specific electoral analsyis you present…no competitive Dems until 2016…I thik that if you bet heavily on that you & your family will be eating a lot less well than you are today.
Part of what’s going on…part of the process in which I’m a molecule…is that a lot of liberals are uncomfortable with the gross simplifications that represent our wing of politics, and we’re scratching around for new ones.
When we find them, I think they will be very powerful.
A.L.
Just followed Trent’s link, went over and looked at the Pournelle article. Interesting. Close to what I’ve been thinking about, but different enough to be v. damn useful.
A.L.
Interesting model…but it’s important to recognize that the economy doesn’t consist only of Fortune 500 corporations on the one hand and mom-and-pop stores on the other. There are thousands and thousands of businesses in the range of, say, 50 to 1000 employees. Some are private, some are public. They represent both an important part of the economy, a key vehicle for social mobility, and a significant source of innovation. My perception is that many Republican initiatives are directed toward assisting these midrange businesses, more than either of the ends of the spectrum.
David –
Could you suggest some specific ones??
A.L.
>As far as the specific electoral analsyis you
>present…no competitive Dems until 2016…I
>think that if you bet heavily on that you & your
>family will be eating a lot less well than you
>are today.
A.L.
I think differently.
Republicans have their political money contributions split about 52-54/48-46 percent between big money bags and their mailing list subscription small contributors. The Religious Right has about 15% of the vote over all in Republican primaries and more in Southern states, but they are not the deep pockets of the national party. This means over all the Republicans are a coalition of factions rather than a group of factions dominated and ruled by a single faction.
Democrats as a party are dominated by a hard left faction that has about 15% of the primary vote and over 50% of the money in the party.
This ruling faction is nothing so much as a cross between 1940’s Trotsky-ites (sp?) and “Jeffersonians” as described by Mead. They are the mind children of the people Truman ran out of the Democratic Party in 1946 and they came back to power in 1972-74 with the McGovern primary victory and the aftermath of Watergate.
The dominant Democratic faction is opposed to nationalism, any nationalism and most especially American nationalism and the ordered liberty that arises from it.
There can be for them no “American Exceptionalism” in any sense of the word for them. Nor can their be federalism or anything outside the USA. They are big central government statists who are functional isolationists.
All this means Democrats are dead and damned because they have given up on America.
In order to win nationally, or for State wide Federal office, all a Republican has to do is point out who will be coming in with a winning Democratic candidate, however strong his national security credentials. The missed opportunities to grab Osama Bin Laden, to stop South Korea from funding North Korean nukes, Somalia, and Clinton’s sales of secrets to China will all be hung out like banners.
The Democats already see losing four seats in the Senate in 2004.
That is their best case scenario.
Trent, South Korea funded North Korea’s nukes? Huh?
“The Democats already see losing four seats in the Senate in 2004.”
Where did you hear this? Also, I would like to join the Democats.
Your numbers don’t add up. There are more small businesses than ever since the 1920s move from the farms to the cities (considering the family farm as a business).
These are sole-proprietor and limited partnerships, and they employ the majority of the people – where these business owners pay the majority of the taxes (as personal income, vs business tax). And the trend continues. These are the first people to hire and the first to lay off.
They have the largest single lump political power (shear votes as an interest group, larger than the second voter block in the unions). And they are the ones who’s average $100 contribution to the GOP makes the party so formidable wrt hard money contributions.
It’s the DNC that has to rely on narrow special interest groups, the fat-cats & corporate (lawyers & those co-dependent on their regulators) to maximally contribute, and even then they can’t touch what the small $$ contributors to the GOP add up to.
Ari:
I’m certainly not mounting a defense of the DNC on these pages. But I’ll suggest that you dig a bit into the numbers.
“The proportion of all firms that are small was virtually unchanged in the 1990s, while small businesses’ static share of total employment declined slightly over this period. Small firms employed about 51 percent of workers in the private sector economy in 1998, a slight decline from their 54 percent share in 1990; this share changed less than one percent in any one year over the 1990–1998 period (Table A.3.) The small business share in 1999 is believed to have remained at about 51 percent. The decline in the share of small firm employment may be the result of small firms growing into large firms and/or of a general increase in entry barriers that would adversely affect the viability of new small business ventures, or of small firms becoming more capital-intensive and relying less on labor.” from http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/stateofsb99_00.pdf.
There are a bunch of bad (conflicting, unclear) stats out there on this, but this one seems to be fairly telling.
A.L.
You may find the *Political Compass* site interesting. If you take the quiz offered, you can see where you fall on their two-axis representation of the American political spectrum. I happen to think that their compass is a reasonably fair representation of the common clusters by ideology.
AL…the Republican initiatives I had in mind are the dividend tax cut, the inheritance tax elimination, and most especially tort reform.
A.L. Anytime I hear anyone making sweeping generalizations about the personality or pyschology of broad segments of the political spectrum; I am reminded of the very sincere, thoughful man who wrote a letter to the editor that I read.
He had been pondering deeply as to why liberal commentators did so poorly in the talk radio market. He thought he had an answer. I paraphrase: “Formats like NPR tend to attract people with above average intelligence, higher levels of education, refined taste in music, art and food; and a preference for reasoned discussion. On the other hand the talk radio format tends to be geared to a lower intelligence, shorter attention span and less refined taste and a very confrontational style of conversation. So, it would be natural for liberals to prefer NPR.”
Now, aside from being a hilarious unintentional parody of a limousine liberal stereotype and being almost completely provabably false in nearly every point…it was wholey self serving and based entirely on the man’s predjudices.
Which is the point.
My first thought while reading your essay is that it gave a lot more insight about you thought and felt than it did of any segment of population.
My second was that if you are going to accuse a large part of the political class of living in a “fantasy” you really should present some evidence. I saw none.
My third was that you should really read the serious works of some actual conservative thinkers and not just the weekly magazine or newspaper articles or weblogs. And you should look at some of the serious political scientists who have systematically examined conservative and liberal movements. As some of the other commentors have pointed out, you are just flat wrong about the professed beliefs of many elements of the conservative spectrum. Similiarly, there are already a number of better categorizations of American politics than you propose. These characterizations are based on evidence such as professed beliefs, polls, voting and political contribution patterns, election results, party platforms and so on.
However, I salute your sincerity, civility and the courage to attempt what you are doing.
Well, patrick, I’ll take the compliment.
I’d be happy for you to suggest ‘some of the serious political scientists who have examines conservative and liberal movements’ for me to read; I’ve read some thing, but certainly am always looking for more.
It’d be helpful to me if I could ask you to make some substantive points about where you disagree, rather than simply pointing out that you do.
As to the professed beliefs…my point was that when professed beliefs contradict actions, you’re fundamentally living in a fantasy construct. Stfrong elements of the GOP (and the Dems) are.
But I’ll enlarge on that in a bit.
A.L.
[Note: edited to remove inappropriately snarky tone]
Pardon the new voice here; I’ve been popping in and out this blog site of awhile (and quite pleased with what I’ve seen so far). This is one discussion I can add to.
Republicans and Democrats…hmmm…I believe one of the reasons for the tangled arguement is that both parties (to a greater extent, the Republicans) are a work in progress. Up until 1994, the Republicans were a long-term minority party. Being out of power for 40+ years bred a certain mind-set; at that point there were two major wings of the party: the conservatives (dominated by constitutionalists) and county-clubbers (professional politicians).
The ‘country-clubbers’ were quite content with their political status: they got their share of budget to pass out their respective regions and all was well (in their minds). It is that particular wing of the party that is giving Bush the most grief at this point in time. The conservatives watched the status quo until Reagan come along. The importance of Reagan’s two terms CANNOT be understated; his view of America, and the world, gave momentum to the conservative elements in society that had had no significant voice up to that point. Now if you’ll forgive me, I’ll jump over to the other side (it’ll make sense, I hope…) after a minor digression.
Please keep in mind that part of the reason for the confusion in this discussion is the presence of a ‘static’ viewpoint of the political parties. That’s the first mistake. Everything made by the hand of man grows and changes over time…period. Without getting too ponderous, both parties went into a relative period of stasis (and no, I’m not contradicting myself). Both had fairly stable values and viewpoints that only changed by an EXTREME outside influence: major conflicts, harsh economic shifts, and a change in America’s status on the world stage.
That being said, let’s move on to the Democrats.
Here I speak as a former member of that party. Why did I leave? To quote Reagan, I didn’t really leave, the party left me. I’m old enough (and possess a strong sense of history) to remember what the Democratic party USE TO BE and what it’s respective leaders use to stand for. When did the change come? IMO, the middle period of the Cold War. Vietnam. Up until that point NOBODY disagreed that totalitarian socialism was a bad thing. Then the changes came. The USSR, with lots of money, and ideological friends within our Republic began a campaign of internal attack. For those of you rolling eyes about now, bag it. Historical studies of those KGB archives made available put that argument to rest. Period. So don’t even try to say I’m full of shit and leave it at that; the evidence is too extensive and damning. So why bring this up? Because it puts into context the shift in the Democratic party from ‘defender of the little guy’ to exploiter of class envy.
The one part I’ll set aside is LBJ’s ‘Great Society’. Whether it was a genuine attempt at humanist policy or a cynical move to tie a whole racial group to a particular political party, I haven’t decided yet. Probably a bit of both. Be that as it may, it was still a disaster for a whole ethnic group AND laid the foundation for social experimentation and it’s ever increasing costs.
That being said, the Democrats evolved from a party of ‘average’ people to a party of social manipulation, and a collection of special ‘interest’ groups: ethnic, educational unionist, trade unionist (a shadow of it’s former self), environmentalist (the new home, and cloak for ‘far left’), and a group I’ll label (for ease) as the ‘extreme’ sexual libertines. What drives the Democrats now is a ‘activist’ mentality: we ‘care’, we ‘know what’s best for you’. These individuals do not comprise the bulk of the party’s rank and file but they are firmly in the driver’s seat. Their grip on the party was firmed up by the two major waves of Democrat defections to the Republican party: the Reagan years and the post-’94 period. Why did they leave? Some of them (like me) took a hard, honest, look at their party and saw nothing recognizable to their core ideals. Some left to maintain some sense of political power, fortunately they were a minority.
As I had said earlier, this whole process is still in flux. The inital trigger, Reagan, laid out the dividing lines: the importance of the individual, not the state, and parallel to that, the recognition that the Constitution is a limit on the ambition of government, not the citizen. After 20+ years of unchecked state manipulation of society, that was no small declaration. The second trigger: the first two years of the Clinton presidency. The Democratic Left saw a green light for change and charged forward. That was their fatal mistake (Waco didn’t make matters any better for them…). The Left let their mask slip and the average American said NO. The entire Clinton presidency polarized the political landscape…I’ll forgo any commentary on Clinton’s actions, that is in the past and hopefully that corpse will stay buried (though the problems he left undone haunt us now, with a vengence). 9-11 was the trigger for an awakening for a significant portion of the population; people actually started paying attention to the actions of the Democrats and Republicans. The mid-term elections of 2002 was NOT a fluke. But sides presented their viewpoints, contrary to what the Democrats may think, their message DID get out. The rest is current history.
I have come to the opinion that the current labels being thrown about have either been corrupted through demonization or are inadequate in defining the intent of various political factions. I reject the notion that statism, as viewed by the Democrats exists within conservative Republican circles; those ideas being being floated (free drugs, etc.) are wrong-headed defensive measures. I follow the Bush administrations actions closely and am not pleased with his accomodations to Democratic ideas. But on the other hand, I do know of policy ideas that are getting very little press coverage; ideas that if left undisturbed will begin to diminish the bloated Federal government. Being a realist, I know Bush’s political situation is such that he can’t go charging ahead. After 2004, with a wide enough mandate, Bush will be able to dispense with the quiet approach devolving government. I might be wrong, but I doubt it.
I am a Constitutional conservative and to a certain extent, a social conservative. I don’t have a problem with ‘private’ personal behavior, but I DO have a problem with individuals and groups who willfully attempt to deconstruct society for their own selfish ends (NAMBLA anyone…?). My roommate is a liberal, but he is (by self admission) an adherent to 19th Century humanism (think Hume…) and is more than a little disturbed by the current state of the Democratic party.
In closing, you are either a statist, and thereby a socialist (at best) or you are not. You either hold with the opinion that individuals come together to form a state, or are merely cogs. The rise of social conservatives is simply a reaction to the debasement of general society…an arguement for another day.
Linden,
This should be of interest.
Summit scandal hits S.Korea
By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 2/4/2003 7:06 AM
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 4 (UPI) — South Korea’s much-touted efforts to reconcile with North Korea suffered a major setback as a controversy flared up that President Kim Dae-jung had bribed the communist regime to stage a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000.
A former intelligence officer has revealed that the South Korean leader funneled some 2 trillion won ($1.7 billion) to his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, in return for holding the summit, and lobbied foreign countries to get the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize.
With the cash, North Korea purchased key components for nuclear weapons, 40 Soviet-made MiG jets and a submarine from Kazakhstan, said the former agent known only by his family name, Kim.
The flap came just after government auditors confirmed that the country’s giant business conglomerate Hyundai secretly transferred some $200 million, obtained from a South Korean state-run bank, to North Korea just ahead of the summit in June 2000.
(snip)
That’s unbelievable. Thanks, Trent. I swear. There’s no way to describe the stupidity of the South Korean government.