1. Sorry to have been out of touch. But glad to see Pete and Carl posting on how conservatives are getting whipped on the narrative or “branding” front.
2. On FDR’s Second Bill of Rights: I agree it was an effort at “refounding.” I also think it failed. Our Court flirted with the idea of “welfare rights” in the mid-60s, but not since then. Today the idea that “freedom from want” is a legal right–an individual right–has no legs. Lots of liberal academics teach “social justice,” but the idea hasn’t captured the popular imagination or infused our real constitutional interpretation. We can’t even justify affirmative action as an egalitarian right flowing from remediation or just identity politics. Our Court increasingly hasn’t regarded it as a “right” for those who receive it, but hide it under the educational imperative of “diversity” for those who don’t receive it. And even the diversity justification is now under siege. So FDR’s Second Bill is the darling of SOME liberal academics and the target of OUTRAGE of some libertarian/conservative commentators, but it doesn’t drive our mainstream political life.
3. I do agree that conservatives continue to be excluded from defining our academic narratives in the social science and the humanities. The newest and most pernicious form of narrative is the turn to the idea that universities have the “civic mission” to transform political dialogue by activist illumination of community deliberation. Civic education really is becoming community organizing.
4. But it would be as easy to ignore the libertarian threat to higher education, which may be just as pernicious. The libertarian threat to higher education in the name of productivity is seen in the “public policy” think tanks influencing Republican governors to “disrupt” higher education by holding it to the standard of measurable competencies, sometimes beginning and ending with salaries offered to graduates. Their target is both the humanities understood by the ideological left and the humanities as understood by traditional conservatives. Remember here our Mr. Ceaser’s alliance with the sociological left against UVA’s Board of Visitors’ efforts at disruption against the unproductive liberal arts and toward online education, MOOCS, and such. Bauerlein often seems to be allying with the disrupting libertarians against the ideologues, but it’s hard to tell whether his efforts actually help conservatives. We can see that both forms of conservative alliance are tricky and questionable, because “our allies” our hostile to “our narrative.”
5. I agree with Pete every time he reminds us that the Republicans–especially since the election–have become the stupid party. They have lost the capacity to develop a middle-class narrative against the Democrats’ cultural libertarianism as part of an agenda of pro-family public policy. They’ve lost the capacity to develop a narrative of American leadership of the world through prudent confidence and military strength. They, as Pete says, talk as if the minimum wage, the tax rate for the rich, unions, and the road to serfdom are our key issues. The Randians really are doing the best job of mobilizing what can be loosely called the conservative young. The result is conservatism becomes just another form of Tocquevillian individualism, of apathetic indifference to the souls of one’s fellow citizens and one’s fellow human beings.
March 17th, 2013 | 1:32 am
[...] 2. On FDR’s Second Bill of Rights: I agree it was an effort at “refounding.” I also think it failed. Go to the Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
March 17th, 2013 | 8:07 am
Prof. Lawler is correct that the courts have thus far declined to read an “economic bill of rights” into the constitution. This could very well change, however, if we have a sustained period of Democratic control of the presidency and senate, as now seems likely. “Welfare rights” is an idea that is not at all out of the mainstream in the law schools (see e.g. Cass Sunstein). A few more receptive Supreme Court justices (we probably already have at least 3 now) could make it happen, if the political climate is such as to indicate to the leftwing justices that there would be no effective political counter-reaction (i.e. that the country is “ready,” or “sufficiently evolved,” for the change). There is already precedent for this sort of thing at the state level, where state courts have dictated funding levels for public education based on education clauses in state constitutions. And the Left and the media seem to be able to transform previously marginal causes into substantial popular “movements” at will. So I wouldn’t be complacent about this not happening in the foreseeable future just because it hasn’t happened yet.
March 17th, 2013 | 8:11 am
So what Peter really means by saying the Republicans are the dumb party now, is, essentially, that they get an F in rhetoric, a C- in policy-making (in that they especially neglect the rhetorical side of policy-making), and a B in political philosophy, whereas the Dems earn a C+ in rhetoric that gets inflated to an A thanks to their teacher’s-pet relationship with the MSM, and D in policy-making, and an F in political philosophy. That is, on the fundamentals, they remain the stupider party by far, as our Ceaser once said:
And let’s not even talk about the Citizenship grade!
See, I’m a latecomer to Republican identification. I’ve always thought there was something stilted-sounding and quasi-idolatrous in Republican rhetoric, Reagan’s included. I’ve never expected great things from it. But I have come to expect that adults, especially Tocquevillian ones, will look beyond that.
So I find Peter and Pete’s call to worry especially about the Republicans not moving me–I remain more far worried about the Dems and the nation as a whole. Republican idiocy me worries most of all for the way it hands power within the Democratic Party over to the wrong types, by making things seem easy, by making Obama seem a master of winning politics. However, I just expect Republican rhetoric issues, including the ones that go deeper, into the dominance of certain types of donors and radio personalities, will eventually sort themselves out as well as can be expected. “As well as can sort themselves out” means, in part, that we will never ever get a party in which most of its leaders sound like our Pete. At best we can have a platform and a few new catch-phrases sounding like Pete, and slightly greater number of politicians who really are like Pete. Read yer Tocqueville.
In other words, it may be that a focus upon reforming Republican rhetoric and policy-casting is the right one in that it keeps us from despair, but my eyes keep darting over to the ideological precincts where I spend half my political life. The elimination of the moderate Democrats, and the elimination of many moderate habits in the Democrats that remain, continues to fill me with dread. Especially in a nation that seem increasingly prepared to accept their leadership as the norm.
March 17th, 2013 | 9:27 am
The reason I don’t agree with djf is right that I really think that the welfare state is unsustainable and “social justice” arguments don’t move the young and our “Belmont elite”. Of course it’s possible he could be right, but I don’t think he points to the main thing to worry about.
I don’t think the Democrats are quite as evil as Carl says. But they’re getting away with way with too much BECAUSE the Republicans suck these days. I hope young people will understand THAT.
I averted my eyes from CPAC until I saw a few clips this morning. GEEZ! Why do they let Palin says stuff like Todd has the gun and I have the rack? I exempt my charismatic and brilliant friend BEN CARSON from all criticism. Ben, if you are serious (and I know you’re retiring from surgery), spend a year or two studying hard about philosophy and politics and then hit the road. Maybe Pete and Carl will volunteer to be your TUTORS, your Ken Masugi(s).
March 17th, 2013 | 9:33 am
[...] Peter Lawler, in the context of challenges facing conservatives, speaks to higher education in America. It is so easy for some to see the fight as Liberal vs. Conservative when the varying positions just don’t divide out so simply. [...]
March 17th, 2013 | 10:26 am
One note, there’s a difference between stupid (as in idiotic) and Stupid as Mill meant it (meaning our party accepts the answers God gave us, instead of questioning everything).
However, a party that does not advocate for a system that would universally relieve the citizenry of “want” can have no middle-class message in an era where labor has decreasing value. In that sense the GOP is behaving stupidly. You can’t tell people to depend on their jobs for health care, retirement, education money, etc., when employment rates are permanently declining.
March 17th, 2013 | 11:16 am
I like Ben, too, but I don’t know what his politics is? Is he RINO, Neo, or Tea Party? Curious indeed, but what a brilliant, inspiring man!
March 17th, 2013 | 12:40 pm
Prof. Lawler, you may be right that the welfare state is on an unsustainable course in its current form, with our present tax structure, but, as others have remarked (and Leftists acknowledge among themselves), they believe that they can extend the scope and size of the welfare state (while reducing its quality) by vastly increasing taxation of everyone, through rate increases and probably the imposition of a VAT as well. The reduction of the middle class’s after-tax income will ironically have the effect of increasing demand for government benefits for which the individual need not pay.
The Belmont elite may not get excited over “social justice” arguments, but I don’t see them terribly troubled by these sort of arguments either, nor are they moved by arguments for limited government. The elites you refer to are blithely confident that they will continue to do well no matter how much the Democrats expand government. Many of those with doubts about the Democrats’ economic and fiscal agenda stay on the reservation because of cultural issues (abortion, gay rights, environment, et al.). At the least, this describes enough of the elite to make the coastal and Great Lakes states unwinnable for the GOP in presidential and senatorial elections.
In sum, I don’t share the optimism about conservative prospects that seems to be implicit in your statement that our current welfare state is unsustainable. But, as always, I could be wrong, and hope I am.
March 17th, 2013 | 1:17 pm
All things considered, I think the libertarian danger to university education may be greater than the liberal danger. Life is not all about starting average salaries…
To a certain extent, I wonder if an overwhelming fear of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights becoming enacted is what drives a certain type of libertarianism to go to the opposite extreme. Both modern liberals and modern libertarians seem to forget that the Founders were men of prudence…
The Republicans are of course the stupid party, but I’m not sure its any worse since the election. After all, that stupidity is a big part of why they lost in the first place, right?
Perhaps the most amazingly dumb thing I’ve heard lately is the alleged need to shorten the primary system further so the “front runner” doesn’t get too bloodied. Our primary is, despite starting so early in the year and allegedly extending for months and months is really almost always over, in practical terms, in about 2 weeks. That’s terrible, because it means almost every election is between the front runner and the random flavor of the week guy. And that’s gotten us a series of remarkably weak party leadership supported candidates in basically every presidential election post-Reagan.
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