We must regrow a true Conservative movement to displace the Party of Sedition (Part II)

Conservatives respect processes that devolve from the law, including the Constitution. But it is the Reactionary who is focused on original intent.

Originalism is a theocratic sentiment. To regard ancient texts as the embodiment of enduring truth assumes an omniscient mind at the origin. This is neither rational nor reasonable, whether it be applied to old men in a middle eastern desert 2500 years ago or "founding fathers" 250 years ago.

Reactionaries may be, but need not be, theocratic, but originalism suits their desire to block all change, to retard progress, to reject all proposals for renewal. Hence, they are rhetorically aligned.

There is no valid role for originalists in politics or on the Courts. Their rightful place is in the academy, to teach us the role of our origins in our intellectual history. It is fair to wish to know what we once thought, but not to force us to never evolve.

There is no valid role for reactionaries anywhere in a functioning society. Truth is never their goal. Rejection of all proposals for change, independent of merit, is their MO. Sometimes this goal is subsumed in a fervent antigovernment or anti-regulation bias; sometimes it is well disguised. But it has no productive role.

There is a valid role for true Conservatism, however. In a functioning society, Progressives are unrelenting in the advancement of a vision for, and strategies for achieving, a just society, and Conservatives are useful in demanding to see the feasibility study, the implementation plan, and the financing. Conservatives trust the tried and true, understand there are sometimes unintended consequences. Conservatives help us avoid costly mistakes or ill-planned ventures that signal more virtue than they achieve.

Of course, there are few Conservatives left in the GOP. Even their SCOTUS appointees are largely reactionary or originalist or both. The GOP spends with reckless disregard for the consequences. Their rhetoric is reactionary, often authoritarian. Until recently, the GOP was predominately fascistic (wedding reactionary and corporate interests) until the pragmatics of evolving and rational corporate leadership (Coke, Delta, MLB) prevented them from drinking the insurrectionist, Jim Crow (i.e., Confederate) Kool Aid. When fascism tears apart, the next stage is usually tyranny. When secession and tyranny blend, we have sedition and treason. This is where they are now.

While the current GOP is to be feared and ostracized, this cannot be allowed to confuse us. An organization with a visionary must have a disciplined chief financial officer to survive. A just society needs powerful Progressives but it also needs skeptical Conservatives. Fiscally responsible conservatives (almost unknown for a generation) would raise the top marginal tax rates far higher than Biden will propose. Eisenhower was at 90% and even Reagan at 50% for seven of his eight years. We need the Lincoln Republicans now more than ever.

We must regrow a true Conservative movement to displace the Party of Sedition (Part I)

There's no turning back to the Party of Sedition and Treason. Therein would lie tragedy and ruin.

But a single party system is also untenable. No party, unchallenged, is truly accountable.

We desperately need the Lincoln Republicans, Schmidt, Navarro, Romney, Cheney, Kinzinger, Chafee, Flake, Powell, Ridge, Gerson, Hagel, Hayden, Mattis, Whitman, Bush, McRaven, Comey, Mueller, Bolton, Kristol and others -- and yes, they're not all heroes -- to announce the formation of the Lincoln Republican Party. We need them to assert true conservative values -- accountability and lawfulness for everyone, fiscal integrity, the belief that something new needs to be thoroughly tested, respect for the tried and true but not the tried and failed, respect for Constitutional process without being wedded to original and outdated intent.

None of these values are part of the Party of Sedition. That is, conservatives still clinging to the seditionists may say they believe in personal accountability and other conservative values, but that has nothing to do with their vote.

Further, these values cannot all be healthfully incorporated into a Progressive movement which must be driven by a vision of a just society above all else.

A healthy society uses a conservative countervailing power bloc to double check progressive proposals for change. Like reactionaries, conservatives are aware that government solutions can have negative, unintended consequences and we count on them to "do the math." Unlike reactionaries, conservatives know that not all government initiatives fail. Further, conservatives understand that the Constitution itself is of no use ("promote the general welfare") if reactionary anti-change and antigovernment bias flourishes.

In an ideal society, the progressives push hard for change and the conservative double-checks the plan, including the finances.

Again, the Party of Sedition is neither interested nor capable of doing any of this. And fringe Ayn Randian libertarian reactionaries are as useful as a broken clock, repeating the same message at all times for all problems.

The primary danger of Trump's continued influence is that he, like Hitler after the Beer Hall Putsch of late 1923, continues to threaten obliteration. But a secondary danger is that his vile vision for a gilded fascist state led by lawless authoritarianism is so captivating to so many horrible or horribly-deluded Americans, that there appears to be too little fertile soil to regrow a true Conservative movement in the US. And that is actually needed for long term survival.

You've been intentionally confused into conflating democracy and this brand of unfettered capitalism

Koch fully understands what the vast majority of Americans do not: that democracy is in opposition to unfettered, capitalism and its kleptocratic equilibrium. And he and his kind choose the latter.

Many on the Right fully conflate democracy and capitalism, imagining, or choosing to imagine, that they are the same thing (idiotic) or complementary (an hypothesis worth examining). The conflation is not without some history: the advocates of a capital based system have employed rhetoric to confuse the masses. "Free" enterprise is meant to sound like political "freedom," when of course it means no such thing.

Democracy is a political system -- an act of genius invented by classical Athenians, reinvented and applied by the British, the French, early Americans, and others. The US Constitution is not notable for its contribution to democracy as ordinarily understood, but for its protection of the rights of all, even when in the minority -- a valuable step forward, of course, and one to be admired when we live up to it.

The market-based system that grew up in the Industrial Revolution, and evolved into this complex system in which investors allocate our resources according to the optimization of their investment returns, has its merits, but it is not entirely consistent with democracy. One dollar, one vote versus one citizen, one vote. If you pay attention, it's not hard to see the difference.

The confusion -- and the intentional rhetoric aimed at confusing people into supporting this insane brand of unfettered capitalism that has enriched the Kleptocratic class beyond imagination because they reject totalitarianism -- has its roots, according to some scholars, in the Cold War.* As Soviet-style socialism was totalitarian and post-war capitalist systems were more democratic, the war against totalitarianism provided ideological cover for capitalism (as it was working hand-in-hand with democracy).

But socialism around the world today is much more democratic than ever before, and the world's most unfettered capitalist economies (China and the US) are now quasi-totalitarian or on the cusp, so this argument has lost its impact. Further, many of those who reject democracy (e.g., the American GOP and their Kleptocratic puppet masters) are the biggest advocates of unfettered capitalism -- fighting to kill off all democratic voice in regulating business, and thus challenging our sovereignty over our lives, our health, our air, our water, our values. As well, in the US, advocates of capitalism have become authoritarians, thus standing in direct opposition to democracy.

As social movements are more push-and-shove than coherent, this means that much of the American Left, seeing that the totalitarian right is invested in killing democracy and saving capitalism, have chosen not to point out that we could have both, as long we honored democratic processes and imposed social values on business, regulating them as do all civilized societies, but have instead decided that if they are to oppose the Right, they should oppose capitalism. There is some legitimate tradition here -- the far left has long been more sympathetic to the values of communism and less critical of its flaws -- but we are observing is not a nuanced critique of the Right's anti-democratic, pro-unfettered-and-brutal-version of capitalism men like Koch advance. Instead many on the far Left have just jumped into the fight with blunt and uncritical attacks on all market-based systems. When they are forced to acknowledge that a democratic market-system like Sweden's has its merits, they just call it socialism.

To be clear, the far Right knows that full-blooded democracy would never allow their brutal, unfettered version of Kleptocratic capitalism. The exploitation of the 99% since 1980 in the US has been an astonishing success for them. Even folks like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, characterized by the Right as socialists, are offering tiny, tepid solutions; just to recover the sort of society and system we had when the US was an exemplar for the world (say the level of inequality we had from 1950-1966), we'd have to impose wealth and income taxes that no one can offer without political death.

Yet, some version of a market-based system, doing what it does well, with a rational, economic regulatory process to impose both EFFICIENCY and EQUITY, is probably optimal. Because of our history, this centrist idea -- if applied objectively -- is now too far left to be palatable to the majority, not interesting to those on the far left who want the system dismantled, and of course horrifying to the Right, although it would be better for the vast majority of them.

And so we are left with an unfettered brand of capitalism -- a horrible, inequitable and unsustainable version that the brilliant Karl Polanyi, understanding its deadly appeal, called "a stark utopia." This system, dressed up in red, white and blue, and stripped of all civility, decency and effectuality, is our Aegean Sea, home to our sirens, whose song is too strong for us to resist.

Unless we find our own Orpheus to resist them, we will all drown.

___

* E.g.,

Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy

THE COLD WAR ORIGINS OF RATIONAL CHOICE LIBERALISM

S.M. AMADAE

Everyone has a story to tell

When some historians noted that orthodox histories did not truly tell the stories of racial minorities, some set out to tell those stories.

And many whites reacted badly.

When some historians noted that orthodox histories did not truly tell the stories of women, some set out to tell those stories.

And many men reacted badly.

When some historians noted that orthodox histories did not truly tell the stories of indigenous peoples, some set out to tell those stories,

And many desdendants of colonizers reacted badly.

When some historians noted that orthodox histories did not truly tell the stories of religious minorities, some set out to tell those stories.

And many Christians reacted badly.

The leftist claims and reactionary counter-claims you experience on social media are nothing new. The heterodoxy has been trying to tell its stories for a long time -- not always perfectly, of course -- and the orthodoxy, fearful of claims of privilege or reparations, has long resisted giving oxygen to those stories.

And that is a terrible reality.

But all disagreements have not been acrimonious. For example, during the anti-war demonstrations at Columbia during Vietnam, Richard Hofstadter was against them while one of his prize doctoral students, Mike Wallace, supported them -- yet they remained lifelong friends.

The only thing new is that every Tom, Dick and Harry now has an opinion about it all. And more heat than light leaves little room for finding common ground. Of course, the stories of everyone must be told and heard respectfully, but the first stories must be respected, too.

We must be patient for everyone to tell his or her story, but we must also be firm in acknowledging that everyone has a story to tell.

Calm reflection is now guilty by association and the implications are not good

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

--Yeats

There was a time when calm reflection was a better sign of moral character than accusing, disgusted outbursts and cries of moral calamity.

But something has happened.

The ascendance of sociopathy in the US has revealed a ruling class of calm and cold-blooded killers leading a clan of angry, violent ignoramuses. Men like Ben Schapiro and Steven Miller and Mitch McConnell act without conscience but also without fever. (Lindsay Graham, Donald Trump, Jim Jordan and their ilk are sociopaths, but not fully socialized sociopaths, so their outbursts put them in a second tier.)

What this has meant, it appears to me, is that many on the left, especially many liberals who once valued independence of thought, honest reflection, and respectful discourse, have come to associate cold-bloodedness with evil, and this seems to have loosed the tide of frenzied blood-letting in leftwing discourse. That is, once the liberal class started to associate calm discussions of painful, social problems with reactionary rhetoric and immoral character, respectful interaction became guilty by association, and the feeding frenzy was fed steroids.

Social media is now a piranha tank. Piranhas don't kill each other, but when another fish tries to navigate through, it is bloodied in an instant.

Facebook has explicitly or inadvertently tried to incentivize balkanization. If someone who disagrees with you reports you -- I have been "canceled" by Fox Viewers three times (and yes I appreciate their hypocrisy)-- FB banishes you. It makes their business model work best if we all block anyone who disagrees with us, and swim in homogeneous pools of like-minded souls who confirm our biases and support our craziness.

As confirmation bias is one of the key flaws of an irrational mind, Americans have taken up a challenge, and social media has supported that effort, to become as ignorant and irrational in as short time frame as possible.

While most are reading with the idea of emotional tagging -- they're in a mad race to decide if the meme is something to applaud or attack -- the few who are left trying to figure out whether the idea is right, wrong, or in need of amendment are criticized for lacking revolutionary zeal of one sort or another. The Left is famous for its tests of loyalty -- and it is clear today that there is little room for respectful disagreement on the Left --- but the Alt Right has done great work becoming all clan and no mind, with proclamations of RINO and brutal attacks whenever a Republican wakes up with a conscience. With few exceptions, Republicans who spend 24 hours afraid of going straight to hell are so lambasted by the Alt Right ideologues that they rush back into their putrid dens as fast as Punxsutawney Phil after seeing his shadow.

Trump's defeat in 2020 means 10 million of us will not be dying of Covid-19 and sucked dry of any future by Plutocratic thieves, but even sans Trump we can't actually survive as stupid as we are. For example, the 1.9T relief package needs to be paid for eventually -- and if we don't return to pre-1987 tax rates we will have essentially crippled our children's future in this country. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The arguments on social media are, frankly, so poor that fewer than 1% of the time the proponent of an idea has actually organized his or her logic and evidence to make an honest claim. Critiques are about as well organized, so most disagreements degenerate into nonsense.

Further, everything is out of proportion. In New York State, for example, we have suffered a serious and tragic setback with covid-19: many deaths and economic devastation. I am skeptical that NYS can survive fiscally. Our governor is doing 2-3 crisis jobs, most above his head, frankly. He is clearly overwhelmed by the impossible budget crisis he must solve over the next month. It is discouraging that people who imagine themselves to be morally mature think that the lives lost and the damage done by distracting him in the midst of these crises are justified by their moral absolutism. He should be investigated, as most moral people will agree, but if Trump's prosecutions could wait years, Cuomo's can wait until we are out of the fire. Attacking Cuomo at this moment is akin to slapping the driver of the car because you learned that he was guilty of something upsetting and you cannot wait until the car arrives at its destination.

Until we learn to interact with those we disagree with and learn from one another much more effectively, we will not grow. Further, until we learn to cooperate with one another, we will not be ready to solve the existentially-threatening climate crisis which is about to reach a lost endgame from which there is no coming back.

Where we are now

We have now reached the perverse moment in intellectual history in which tens of millions of people with average capacities for imaginative inferential reconstruction, and lacking a thorough grounding in theories of modern institutions, awaken each day, seize upon one new datum, perhaps reflected in a meme, merge it with an ember of ongoing frustration, and proceed to advance a complete and dynamic schematic for the whole of human existence in the realms of politics, economics, culture and prejudice.

To add icing to the cake, their one paragraph summary of what should be, but is not, a five-volume update of Das Kapital or Fountainhead, is advanced with a stern admonition that anyone who fails to fully and immediately embrace this tsunami of insight is immoral or stupid or both.

We looked the other way

 

We looked the other way when educators warned us that we were dumbing down America.

We looked the other way when the penurious, Koch-brothers cabal decimated public goods and essential infrastructure, waving the false flag of “small” government, convincing Randian frat boys everywhere that their idiosyncratic brand of “public economics” had been proven sensible and truthful to legitimate, mainstream economists.

We looked the other way when Reagan and his cabal dismantled protections for working citizens and tore up our commitment to the post-war social contract, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and any pretense of fairness.  Subsequently, centrists were pleased that many could find social agreement in Reagan’s affability, the center-left employed Reagan’s civility as rhetorical counterpoint to Trump’s vitriol, and leftists were dismissed for truth-telling as in America, despite Alexander Pope’s admonition that all but truth falls still-born from the presses, finding common ground usually means agreeing to the fabricated lies of American exceptionalism.  “Defund the Police” is suffering this dishonest rhetorical bind in 2020.

We looked the other way when the natural connection between the productivity of working men and women and their pay was severed by the gluttonous marriage of business and politics, combined with the forces of post-1980 globalization.  And we looked the other way when unions and equality both suffered a not unrelated precipitous slide in American life and discourse. 

We looked the other way while the Alt-Right was out planting the seeds for a growing fascist movement whose first monstrous offspring was Citizen’s United, whose middle child was the Kleptocratic Vulgarian, and whose last infant has yet to be born.

We looked the other way when the American churchmen, who Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison famously said embraced the Reformation but not the Renaissance, gained sufficient power to take us back in time, first to the 19^th, then the 18^th, and then the 17^th century, seeking to impress painfully upon us all their racial, sexual and totalitarian values.

We looked the other way when cable news balkanized our community mind, replacing the Cronkite’s and Brinkley’s who surely failed us when extremists were telling the truth -- but kept us listening to the same news, thus holding our politicians somewhat accountable to public opinion – with an abundance of hucksters selling not news, but the pablum and the sensationalism that we learned could meet our need to hear just what we wanted and deny all the rest, or turn the channel and find such comfort elsewhere.  Fox famously won in Court the right to lie and in so doing created the Foxenstein monster that has now turned on their Master for trying to tell them the truth.  In Parler and in the ghettos of the Twitterverse, you can now find psychotic, delusional advocates of sedition who are unabashedly waving the very flag they are burning.

We looked the other way when Trump mocked women and their rights to their bodies, mocked the disabled, mocked and minstreled blacks (“There’s my African-American!”), launched psychopathic levels of vitriol at Muslims, at immigrants, at Mexicans – locking children in cages, my God! -- justifying all of this with sophomoric assertions of the value of anarchy, of the businessman, of the outsider, of the modern-day Luddite who might topple the walls of Jericho and out of the rubble that would follow would be, what?  Justice for the working-class, white guy driving a rusty truck and raising three kids without health insurance?  Revolutions eat their young; that's a not a lesson to be forgotten.  All while Trump was obviously distracting fools while loading the gold into his trucks in the back.  As he has done to the tune of $170 million since his election defeat.

We looked the other way at all of this, and now some of us are surprised that the piper must be paid.  The chess player who says that his mistake was the move before he was checkmated is a novice or a fool – the mistakes were made far earlier, and the collapse of his hopes began then, whether or not he was aware of them then or later.  The coach who says the team’s failure was that they had too few points when the final whistle blew needs to step aside – that game was lost many plays, perhaps games, perhaps seasons ago. 

We looked the other way for over forty years. There may be no way back.  Americans are morally immature – a laughingstock in the world community for our sociopathic reaction to plague-required, social-distancing mandates which has and will kill hundreds of thousands, many of whom were and are innocents, including many front-line, health-care workers who we send like boys to the spraying bullets of Gallipoli every time we gather without constraint and caution while toasting FREEDUMB.  And when distancing mandates fail, as they will, our next and last hope will be mass vaccinations, which the same blood mob of angry ignoramuses will reject, some for conspiracies only schizophrenics and children could believe, and many out of a childish, morally -reprehensible obstinacy.  And for those mature enough to line up for a vaccine, there is still the risk that this broken version of capitalism puts the price of the vaccine out of reach of many.

The civilized around the world will look on in horror and amusement that this is the way the American Republic and Empire die, one after another.  Not with a bang, but a churlish, foolish, ignorant whimper.  

We must not be surprised, however.  We looked the other way when it mattered.