Jim Geraghty argues that it wasn’t conservative ideals that took a beating in the election. It was the message of hostility, contempt and general weirdness of some of the center-right’s messengers that was the problem. Geraghty cites Romney’s 47% comment, Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut, comparisons of same sex marriage to bestiality, and of course Todd Akin’s cracked opinions of rape and pregnancy. Geraghty sums up, “If you’re a wishy-washy, not-that-tuned-in, relatively apolitical voter, how do these controversies make you feel about Republicans?”
I think what Geraghty says it true as far as it goes (especially the part about Romney and the 47%), but I would like to put the focus elsewhere. Conservative spokesmen should be more careful about how they frame their arguments for the uncommitted. The Republicans should not nominate another presidential candidate who combines a lack of principles with contempt for those earning just under the national median. But cutting back on such talk will only get you so far because you can’t really stop it altogether. There will, for the foreseeable future, be financial incentives for some conservative media provocateur to say something nasty in order to get attention (or maybe just because they talk so much that something stupid falls out.) Both parties will inevitably nominate some stupid and/or mentally disturbed congressional candidates from time to time. There is a Democrat in the Senate who would not agree to the proposition that a newborn child was a human being with rights. There is a Democrat in the House of Representatives who was afraid that overpopulation would cause the island of Guam to tip over – and this guy is a major improvement over his immediate predecessor.
A big problem here is media consumption habits. A large fraction of the population hears from the center-right very rarely, and what they do hear is filtered through media that is either explicitly (MSNBC) or implicitly (the major networks, entertainment outlets) liberal. The problem isn’t just that Limbaugh said something obnoxious (though that is obviously bad.) For tens of millions of Americans, what they hear of the center-right is whatever is extracted, framed, and popularized by liberal-leaning media. Some conservatives say obnoxious things, but tens of millions of Americans hear conservatives only when conservatives say obnoxious things because that is what gets picked up.
This media reality obviously has multiple implications and I’ve only thought through a few of them. First, “distancing” from problematic statements or people is both necessary and insufficient. The Republicans (outside of Huckabee) could hardly have distanced themselves from Todd Akin more quickly and forcefully. Distancing was better than the alternatives but it wasn’t the end of the story because millions of Americans had no clear idea of what Republicans stood for and the media treatment of Akin was a convenient hook.
Second, Republican candidates are only rarely able to break through the media filter to speak to those Americans who aren’t already inclined to vote center-right, and this means that Republicans have to make the most of these few opportunities. Romney made good use of his first debate opportunity, but he wasted his speech at the Republican convention. But even if Republicans make the most of those moments when they are really heard by non-right-leaning-America, they can only do so much. A couple of speeches cannot undo the impact of dozens and dozens of hostile depictions of Republicans that are repeated year after year. Impressions can change, but they usually change slowly. The biggest challenge is putting people in a position where they are open to having their minds changed by the right candidate with the right message.
Third, the biggest challenge is getting thoughtful, temperate, and comprehensible conservative messages out to nonconservatives during nonelection years. That would do the most to dilute the impact of whatever nonsense is said by this or that character on the center-right. The liberal-leaning media could have obsessed all they wanted about Akin, but if most Americans knew about Obama’s abortion radicalism, the national conversation would have been different. What Rush Limbaugh (or any other talk show host) says on a given day would matter less if most nonconservatives know who Yuval Levin is.
We should expect better of conservative media and Republican candidates, but it is unrealistic to expect that every last organism on the center-right is going to behave. To live in fear of a firestorm the next time someone mouths off is to live in a hostage crisis where you already know the hostage is going to eventually get shot. The best way to reduce the impact of the right’s problem children is to get the best conservative thinking to people who have no contact with the right-leaning media. If they know about smart, decent, civil conservatives, the media firestorms won’t have the same impact.
It isn’t obvious how to get this done. My first suggestion is for conservative donors to change their funding priorities. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on vacuous thirty second election year ads that are designed to make microscopic gains among middle-class, middle-age, white women. Most of those dollars would be better spent on longer ads that have something real to say and that air between elections on media that is mostly watched by nonconservatives. The current shallow approach is costing more than money.
Update: I decided my orginal title for this post was indefensible, so I changed it.
November 21st, 2012 | 5:29 pm
Yes.
But I reserve the right to look my fellow citizens in the eye and say, “Why have you allowed this caricature of 30-40% of your fellow citizens to be painted in your mind? Why haven’t you taken the effort to expose yourself to intelligent conservatism?”
I mean, is National Review a secret?
And for that matter, simply listening to, say, the first half of Rush Limbaugh’s show for four days on a decent week would show the average person that, whatever they make of them man’s ego-issues and showmanship philosophy, the man is pretty smart and makes some good arguments, that they can see why reasonable persons have made his the highest-rated show of its kind.
But they are lazy. They do no such things.
And it’s bloomin’ 2012! Everyone now knows and admits that the legacy media is biased leftward. Jonathan Chait admits it, everyone, even those who castigate Fox, knows it. Nobody’s media diet is perfect, sure…but far too few “moderate” and “reasonable liberal” Americans these days are making the adjustments of their news intake that reflect what they know and admit about this bias.
November 21st, 2012 | 6:10 pm
Carl, fair enough, but I just can’t get too mad at people who don’t make it a point to seek out thoughful, dissenting political opinion outside of their regular media stream. A lot of them only vaguely know it exists and much of what does exist is very much not for them (in as much as it is concerned with entertaining and reassuring its established audience.) Thirty years ago the mass media made it easier for the slightly interested person to be introduced to dissenting ideas at length. Those ideas are a lot easier to avoid now. Many younger people barely know the other side exists as something other than the Other. I don’t think this development has to be permanent, but conservatives just have not adapted to the change in media ecology.
November 23rd, 2012 | 7:51 am
The problem is not that non-conservatives haven’t heard of Yuval Levin.
Here, Yuval Levin:
“The Left’s disdain for civil society is thus driven above all not by a desire to empower the state without limit, but by a deeply held concern that the mediating institutions in society — emphatically including the family, the church, and private enterprise — are instruments of prejudice, selfishness, backwardness, and resistance to change, and that in order to establish our national life on more rational grounds, the government needs to weaken and counteract them.
“The Right’s high regard for civil society, meanwhile, is driven above all not by a disdain for government but by a deeply held belief in the importance of our diverse and evolved societal forms, without which we could not hope to secure our liberty. Conservatives seek mechanisms and institutions to bring implicit social knowledge to bear on our troubles, while progressives seek the authority and power to bring explicit technical knowledge to bear on them.”
The problem is that the coalition of groups celebrating the implicit social wisdom and essential diversity of their prejudice, selfishness, and backwardness may no longer form a reliable governing majority of the electorate.
For example, even a majority of Catholics themselves won’t support the Church on birth control at the ballot box.
That’s the problem.
November 23rd, 2012 | 9:12 am
I’ve read people like Levin. Ain’t gonna convince me. Since when has Wall St. brought “implicit social knowledge” to bear on my economic problems? When a Wall Streeter stumbles onto some “implicit” knowledge, he insider-trades on it for his own benefit. Bain Capital e.g., a “mediating institution” (love that phrase); what does it mediate between? Me and — joblessness and insolvency? The Invisible Hand’s putative universal beneficence is truly invisible for many of us in America. (It was maybe slightly more visible in the 50s and 60s.) That’s just one reason why some of us don’t buy the center-right line; and there are many other good reasons not to.
Also, as some people of a conservative disposition have pointed out, the last eight years of center-right rule, which were cheered on by all the proper center-right media authorities (very much including this journal), were slightly less than brilliantly successful.
Not that the average person really reasons out his political views, as we all know. I largely agree with Peter though, that a better case for the right ought to be made (if it can be). Surely you can do better than National Review and its mellifluous but unsupported absolute certainties.
November 23rd, 2012 | 11:13 am
HT, I think you and Michael Robinson are complementary, rather than conflictual. One can have serious reservations about the Republican establishment (I do) and also find Levin’s analyses illuminating and his prescriptions helpful. I think he is among the very best when it comes to understanding the stakes involved in the Obama administration’s vision & agenda (which is to subordinate civil society to the state and to implement a social-democratic/liberationist vision). The task is to get ER’s (establishment Republicans) to listen to him and his ilk, which is what Pete constantly (and manfully) urges. One correlative battle: the phrase “Bush and the neocons” should be constantly parsed and, as need be, critiqued, as it carries way too much dubious and distracting baggage. Criticism, yes, labels, no. (And lest I be accused of labeling in my foregoing characterization of the Obama agenda, I’ll plead the limits of com-boxes, plus the fact that I don’t know how to link to Levin’s writings on the subject.)
November 23rd, 2012 | 11:32 am
Michael, I can think of no better way for the Democrats to help the Republicans to return to political health than to castigate civil society as “celebrating the implicit social wisdom and essential diversity of their prejudice, selfishness, and backwardness” Get right on that.
HT, I don’t really understand what you are driving at. The importance of social capital and voluntary private organizations has been recognized by Robert Putnam and Tocqueville among others and neither of them (not Yuval Levin) seemed to have confused the importance civil society with a complete lack of regulation of finance. I don’t even see how you made the connection.
As for what Levin might think of banking and Wall Street, here are several articles he has published over at his magazine. Like them or don’t:
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/curbing-risk-on-wall-street
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-regulate-bank-capital
November 23rd, 2012 | 3:17 pm
[...] Obnoxious Statements Aren’t Our Real Problem – Pete Spiliakos, PoMoCon [...]
November 23rd, 2012 | 3:28 pm
Yeah, Pete, I’m so difficult to understand. I just talk jabberwocky. I was reacting to what I take to be quotes from Levin in Robinson’s post above. I have read other stuff by Levin, but didn’t have it to hand. Thanks for the references to something else he’s written. I’ll have a look.
I suppose you want to deny that the center-right is generally pro-Wall St and anti financial regulation? Or that the center-right, which needs to make its case better, basically cheer-led the ultracompetent Bush administration? Whatever. My opinions are just incomprehensible.
Levin appears to describe “private enterprise” as a “mediating institution”. Or maybe it’s Robinson. Or maybe the ghost of Neuhaus. What do you think is the role of finance capital in private enterprise? Negligible, right? What the hell IS a mediating institution, and why should I like them? Who are the poles of the mediating relation?
November 23rd, 2012 | 3:54 pm
Paul, what’s so wrong with social democracy? It served Germany pretty well in the Wirtschaftswunder days. In fact, when the Wall fell it was pushed over by a craving for social democracy, not for capitalism red in tooth and claw. Besides, Obama is only ready to take a few baby steps in that direction.
November 23rd, 2012 | 5:18 pm
“I suppose you want to deny that the center-right is generally pro-Wall St and anti financial regulation? Or that the center-right, which needs to make its case better, basically cheer-led the ultracompetent Bush administration? Whatever. My opinions are just incomprehensible.”
Your opinions on the GOP and financial regulation would make more sense if you took account of the stuff published in National Affairs and the fact that most major recent pre-Obama changes to finance regulation occurred during the Clinton administration. I don’t think that a
“pro-Wall St and anti financial regulation” frame makes sense for a world that contains Barney Frank among others. The two parties are much more internally complicated than all that.
November 23rd, 2012 | 8:20 pm
Pete, I’m not suggesting that all institutions of civil society celebrate prejudice, selfishness and backwardness. I’m not even suggesting that all conservative institutions of civil society celebrate prejudice, selfishness and backwardness (and do recall, that’s Levin’s choice of words, not mine).
I’m merely observing that institutions of civil society which celebrate prejudice, selfishness and backwardness have found a natural home in the Republican Party, and have been a crucial component in Republican electoral strength for several decades, enough to maintain a rough national balance with Democrats.
Today, the problem facing the Republican Party is that even with the contribution of the prejudice, selfishness and backwardness vote, national demographics may have shifted enough that their coalition no longer constitutes an electoral majority.
If so, the only way back to a majority coalition is by accumulating more centrist/progressive votes than are lost, in the process, from the institutions of prejudice, selfishness and backwardness.
That presents a much more fundamental problem than “voters listen to the wrong conservatives”, and the problem is clearly evident in the Republican primary process nationwide.
But, anyway, seriously, good luck with that. I believe a large share of Democrats would welcome a resurgence of sincere, compassionate-conservative, thousand-points-of-light, George Herbert Walker Bush Republicans.
November 23rd, 2012 | 8:24 pm
And, P.S., ACORN was a stereotypical Levinian civil institution, bringing “implicit social knowledge to bear on our troubles”.
See how much mileage that got with the conservatives and the Republican Party.
November 23rd, 2012 | 9:51 pm
Michael,
“I’m merely observing that institutions of civil society which celebrate prejudice, selfishness and backwardness have found a natural home in the Republican Party”
Being that the Democratic Party is currently headed by a man who voted against a state government mandate to provide medical care to infants that survived abortions, I wouldn’t pat myself on the back about opposing the “selfishness and backwardness” of the Republican Party or anybody else.
I actually agree with you that, at the presidential level, the Republicans can’t count on a “natural” majority that would respond to center-right appeals as they have been made and disseminated over the last several decades. They were in a somewhat similar (actually far weaker) position in 1965 but were able to expand their demographic base.
“believe a large share of Democrats would welcome a resurgence of sincere, compassionate-conservative, thousand-points-of-light, George Herbert Walker Bush Republicans.”
I get the feeling that, if you were old enough to be politically aware at the time, you were thinking about Bush in terms of Willie Horton/racist/most negative-campaign-ever terms. The good news about being a conservative is that the last few decades of conservatives are forever being retroactively promoted as being moderate/educated/thoughtful/compassionate while the most recent ones are the worst ever until the next ones. I wish you a life so long and healthy that you are extolling the virtues of Michelle Bachmann as compared to the vices of George Bush V.
“ACORN was a stereotypical Levinian civil institution, bringing “implicit social knowledge to bear on our troubles”.” Now do you really think that voter registration fraud is what Levin had in mind?
November 24th, 2012 | 5:40 am
Pete,
Actually, at the time, I was thinking about Bush in terms of “I was out of the loop”, and the risible “Contra resupply/copter resupply” memo ruse.
Character will out, in the end.
However, as bad as that may have been, at least he didn’t implement and defend a policy of extrajudicial executions of American citizens and routine remote-control family assassinations. So in that respect, among others, he was ever so slightly to the left of the current president, and he certainly was not much to the right on any other point of note.
I never thought George HW Bush, himself, was a racist, nor do I recall that being a complaint in currency at the time on the left. Most Democrats are able to make the distinction between being a racist, and needing to appeal to racists to get elected.
Which gets back to my point.
If the Republican Party is going to try to sell a Levinian vision of an active, thriving, non-governmental civil society that benefits “all” voters, then the Republican Party will first need to make its peace with active, thriving, non-governmental civil institutions that benefit the “wrong” voters.
ACORN. Labor unions. La Raza. ACLU. Planned Parenthood. NOW. Occupy. Greenpeace.
That even you reflexively reach for the tired and discredited trope of “ACORN=voter registration fraud” indicates the magnitude of the challenge.
Big persuasion fail, there.
Unless, of course, “Civil Society” is really just “States Rights” with a fresh coat of paint, in which case, nevermind.
November 24th, 2012 | 10:25 am
I never thought George HW Bush, himself, was a racist, nor do I recall that being a complaint in currency at the time on the left. Most Democrats are able to make the distinction between being a racist, and needing to appeal to racists to get elected.”
I can’t speak for “most” Democrats but the (I think partly pretend) attempts by Democratic spokesmen to refer to Republican statements as racist (up to and including the use of the term Obamacare racist) is a regular feature of our politics. These fine distinctions are sometimes made later. And so we will be reading about that upstanding racial moderate (and son of another) Mitt Romney who had been supplanted by racist radicals.
“That even you reflexively reach for the tired and discredited trope of “ACORN=voter registration fraud” indicates the magnitude of the challenge.”
This complaint makes no sense. Numerous ACORN workers in numerous locations were caught committing voter registration fraud. This is not in dispute. The institutional responsibility of the organizations for these frauds is in dispute. You can like it or don’t.
“Unless, of course, “Civil Society” is really just “States Rights” with a fresh coat of paint, in which case, nevermind.”
I am not under the impression that the Republican ticket wantedPlanned Parenthood’s health care plan to cover medical procedures that they might find objectionable. They do want to either end federal funding for Planned Parenthood or else direct that funding to a later-to-be-created separate entity that is separate from the organization’s abortion provider business (basically what Indiana did.) Seems fine to me. If the left wants abortion subsidies, they ought to argue for them transparently through the budget process and see how far they get.
November 24th, 2012 | 11:39 am
Pete, you are an astute political commentator, as I believe I’ve said before, but on matters of *reasonable* persuasion, like most conservatives, you avoid the really hard questions of principle or fact.
Just blaming the Democrats for cravenly accepting a *conservative Republican idea* (in this case, the blanket necessity of “market solutions” and deregulation) doesn’t make the case for the center-right’s wholehearted embrace of said nostrums. And refusing to admit the obvious FUBAR nature of the Bush administration shows (at the least) a lack of prudence and self-examination. The point is not that Bush was an anomaly — the point is that he was precisely an expression of the center-right views that you and the NRO, e.g., are extolling.
Exercise for pomocon philosophers (relax, Pete, it’s above your pay grade): 1) Define what a “mediating institution” is; in particular, explain what distinguishes a good one from a bad one (you may take it as obvious that government is a bad one). 2) What are the relata between which a “mediating institution” stands? People? Groups of people? Something else? 3) Explain why the only good MEs are things like churches, mosques, synagogues, Lion’s Clubs, businessmen’s organizations, corporations etc. How is it that they uniquely, as MEs, support the common good? Explain how we know, conceptually, that this list is complete.
Peter? Paul? Carl? Show your stuff.
November 24th, 2012 | 12:36 pm
HT, if we were talking about the views of Konrad Adenauer, who spent his war-years reading St. Augustine and the Catholic social encyclicals, I’d be more interested in social democracy; but I’d also have to note that Erhart had strong economic (and other) reasons to object to the form it actually took in Germany. But neither can be realistically likened to the vision of the state-economy-civil society-and-individuals that shapes Obamacare and the attendant HHS mandate, not to mention the shrinking of “religious liberty” to mean “freedom to worship,” and the disingenuous undermining of DOMA, and many other administration initiatives which we “high-knowledge” voters have to take into consideration. All the foregoing, of course, would have to spelled out to convince anyone not already thinking along these lines.
November 24th, 2012 | 2:09 pm
Pete,
“This complaint makes no sense. Numerous ACORN workers in numerous locations were caught committing voter registration fraud. This is not in dispute. The institutional responsibility of the organizations for these frauds is in dispute. You can like it or don’t.”
The complaint is that you’ve on the one hand argued that conservatives have to do a better job of selling the Levinian civil society vision to the center if they’re to have any chance of holding back the Obama/Democrat statist juggernaut.
And then on the other hand, given a successful example of exactly such an institution of civil society benefiting its constituency, you immediately dismiss any merit in its approach or any good in its many achievements, choosing instead to judge it entirely by the most trivial and tangential of offenses.
If this is the sales technique you’re proposing, I suggest it needs some work.
The voter registration fraud committed by ACORN employees was first and foremost fraud against ACORN itself. They were paid to collect legitimate registrations, and submitted fraudulent registrations to get more pay for less work.
ACORN had put in place auditing procedures to screen for this type of fraud, and there has been no suggestion that these audits, which detected and flagged as suspicious hundreds of thousands of registrations, were ineffective or negligent.
And, in the end, for the tiny fraction of fraudulent registrations which may have slipped through both the ACORN audits and subsequent government registrar checks, any consequences were immaterial; due to the nature of the fraud, it did not result in ineligible voters showing up at the polls.
However, if this is the standard you propose for evaluating the legitimacy of civil institutions, with respect to “what Levin had in mind,” well fine, then.
Over the course of many decades, the Catholic Church in the United States knowingly harbored thousands of child rapists. Only counting those cases where abuse was actually reported and substantiated through investigation, the number is between three to four thousand.
Not only did the Church hierarchy not have in place strict procedures to prevent such abuse, but senior leadership, aware of the problem, colluded to protect the perpetrators through relocations and reassignments.
The victims suffered not just the usual lifelong psychological scars caused by sexual violence experienced as a child, but the sense of betrayal and abandonment by individuals and institutions in a position of moral authority.
So, if ACORN is not the kind of institution “Levin had in mind” on the basis of voter registration fraud, then the Catholic Church is undeniably very much less a legitimate Levinian institution of civil society.
November 24th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
HT, just sticking to the simple stuff,
“Just blaming the Democrats for cravenly accepting a *conservative Republican idea* (in this case, the blanket necessity of “market solutions” and deregulation) doesn’t make the case for the center-right’s wholehearted embrace of said nostrums”
The financial reforms in controversy were not only signed by Clinton, but also voted for by such left-Democrats as Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters. I think it is fair to say that none of them were inclined to vote for “Republican” ideas as such and as the law was not a matter of great interest to the general public, it is unlikely that they voted yea because they were “craven.” Other hostile explanations are available however.
This gets to the rub of the matter. Turning this into a Republican “anti-regulation” vs. Democrat “pro-regulation” issue is political mythology rather than policy or historical analysis. It requires ignoring the actions of Demcratic officials (or else shifting responsibility for their actions on to Republicans), while also ignoring the suggested regulatory policies of center-right figures. It also means blaming the Bush administration for policies that were instituted under the Clinton administration and that enjoyed bipartisan support right up until the disaster. I can see why such approach has some propaganda attraction, but it should not be confused with anything that happened on planet Earth.
November 24th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
Michael,
“So, if ACORN is not the kind of institution “Levin had in mind” on the basis of voter registration fraud, then the Catholic Church is undeniably very much less a legitimate Levinian institution of civil society.”
I think your objection melts away if you think (as I do) that the Catholic Church was legitimately a subject of investigation and criticism as a result of the priest abuse scandal. I happen not to think of voter registration fraud as trivial and the offenses were sufficently distributed as to form a disturbing pattern such that the organization was rightly help up to criticism for its institutional conduct (though don’t confuse that with the crazy stolen election conspiracy theories.)
November 25th, 2012 | 4:22 am
Pete,
It’s not really the question whether or not you think the Church was legitimately the subject of investigation or criticism.
Nor is it really the question whether you think voter registration fraud is a non-trivial offense.
The question is whether you, personally, find voter registration fraud a more serious offense than child rape, and, if not, do you have any principled argument for why the former delegitimizes ACORN as a Levinian institution of civil society, while the latter does not similarly delegitimize the Catholic Church?
You seem to believe that, when Levin was arguing for the importance of defending institutions of civil society, he “had in mind” the Catholic Church, but did not “have in mind” ACORN. I’m just trying to get you to unpack that a bit.
Now, it happens I have ready to hand an explanation for why that might be the case, but, regrettably, it’s not an explanation that will have much utility in selling the conservative vision to Obama voters.
November 25th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Michael, “The question is whether you, personally, find voter registration fraud a more serious offense than child rape, and, if not, do you have any principled argument for why the former delegitimizes ACORN as a Levinian institution of civil society, while the latter does not similarly delegitimize the Catholic Church?”
I don’t know how that is any kind of question to anybody. I’m not aware of any legal regime or political society where it is standard practice to avoid criticism of a person of group if their offenses (voter registration fraud? burglary? bribery? whatever) do not reach the level of child rape. Certainly nobody that I know of holds any organization to that low standard. Your entire line of argument reminds me of a more radically partisan version of that 1970s bumper sticker “At Least Nobody Drowned At Watergate”
November 25th, 2012 | 5:44 pm
Pete,
I understand your position as follows:
1. ACORN is not the kind of institution Levin had in mind, because of voter registration fraud.
2. The Catholic Church is the kind of institution Levin had in mind, in spite of child rape.
3. Any attempt to extract an underlying principle for the distinction is radically partisan.
Is that right?
November 25th, 2012 | 8:27 pm
Michael, a little more like this:
1. Just because Yuval Levin approves of civil society does not mean that ACORN or any other group is above criticism (from him or anyone else) for its particular activities.
November 26th, 2012 | 4:13 am
So, just to clarify then, when Levin wrote, “the Right’s high regard for civil society, meanwhile, is driven above all not by a disdain for government but by a deeply held belief in the importance of our diverse and evolved societal forms, without which we could not hope to secure our liberty,” he did, in fact, have in mind organizations such as ACORN, yes?
November 26th, 2012 | 4:39 pm
Nice, Michael. You’ve got Pete in a corner, though he’ll never admit it. The refusal to extract an underlying principle is precisely what I was getting at in asking for some kind of fuller philosophical discussion of what these magic legitimate “mediating institutions” are or could be or should be.
And I think I’ve demonstrated once again that you can’t get a “center-right” FT ideologue to admit that even the *tiniest* criticism of the Bush administration might be warranted, ever (poor W: his difficulties were all entirely the fault of FDR, LBJ, Carter and Clinton, and of course the Satanic Barney Frank). The silence is deafening. The phrase ‘epistemic closure’ (which has other, nonpolitical meanings in contemporary epistemic logic) doesn’t even begin to describe the attitudes around here justly.
November 26th, 2012 | 7:29 pm
Michael “So, just to clarify then, when Levin wrote, “the Right’s high regard for civil society, meanwhile, is driven above all not by a disdain for government but by a deeply held belief in the importance of our diverse and evolved societal forms, without which we could not hope to secure our liberty,” he did, in fact, have in mind organizations such as ACORN, yes?”
To the extent that means helping people fill out paperwork rather than committing voter fraud or helping people evade the law, of course.
“And I think I’ve demonstrated once again that you can’t get a “center-right” FT ideologue to admit that even the *tiniest* criticism of the Bush administration might be warranted, ever (poor W: his difficulties were all entirely the fault of FDR, LBJ, Carter and Clinton, and of course the Satanic Barney Frank). The silence is deafening.”
HT, just because you have chosen to make an incompetent case against Bush doesn’t mean that obvious and legitimate criticisms of Bush do not exist. To pick just one example, I don’t see how the botched occupation of Iraq 2003-2006 is the fault of anyone but George W. Bush and his subordinates. On the other hand, it would be nuts to hold Bush responsible for the Clinton-era bombing of Kosovo on the theory that military intervention was, after all, a “Republican” idea of which Bush is the earthly incarnation (or something.) So I don’t see how George W. Bush is responsible for the passage and signing of federal financial laws during the period when he was governor of Texas. One doesn’t have to construct elaborate, time-altering fantasies to find fault with the Bush administration. But some feel compelled to do just that.
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