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.

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.

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.

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?

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”

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.

“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.)

“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.

“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.