Running through the process that has brought us to the precipice of passing the Senate health care reform bill, as well as the rhetorically violent reaction of some extremely disappointed progressives like Howard Dean and Jane Hamsher, has resulted in this scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the movie, I don’t honestly remember whether it is in the book or not) playing over and over in my head,

What was I doing out here ? What was the meaning of this trip ? Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind… or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story ?

Who are these people, these faces ? Where do they come from ? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas… and, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning… still humping the American Dream — that vision of the big winner… somehow emerging from the last-minute, pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.

- Twenty.
- We change a twenty.

- Thank you.

- Here we go.
- Okay.

- Spinning the wheel, spinning the wheel, spinning the wheel. Make me rich. Make me very rich!

- Eee-yo !

- That’s ten.
- Oh, you bastard !

- Shit. [ Sighs ]
- Sorry.

No, no. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing.

Dean, Hamsher, Greenwald, and an assortment of other progressives who have been keenly outspoken about the shortcomings of the Senate reform bill have come under no small amount of fire (albeit relatively friendly fire) from a number of their fellow progressives who see the bill in a “something is better than nothing” frame. As Ed Kilgore astutely notes at The New Republic, the divide here is more than just a matter of sour grapes and constitutes a real and pressing gap in the analysis and vision of the American left — a divide with which that motley coalition will have to deal  at a point rapidly achieving a status of sooner rather than later.

So while I would likely fall into line with Erik’s ultimate sentiment of supporting the reform (after everything that has happened, to turn around seems unwise), a part of my heart and thoughts follow along the outraged lines of dissatisfied progressives. [Read more →]

The newest troubling twist in the Canadian Afghan detainee torture scandal is that the chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission that was investigating Colvin’s allegation and who blasted government for, “stonewalling the inquiry by withholding the requested documents, ” (sound familiar? yeah…) will not have his contract renewed  next month despite wanting to stay on to finish his work on inquiring into the issue. [Read more →]

Andrew et al link to a polling graph that places my misreading of party ID numbers last week in pretty obvious context. I’ve spent the last week thinking a lot about that post and the push back I received to it.

It was a bit surprising to me just how emotionally invested I became in the contents of that post and how charged my own actions became around the ensuing discussion. I’m generally pretty sincere in my writing, but also try to consciously maintain a certain distance from anything I write. I want to be open to as much as possible, unattached to being “right”, and swayed by the best arguments that happen to come along. My thought process on that post might lend some insight into why that wasn’t the case with that particular post and leads well into where my head is at now vis-a-vis its contents. [Read more →]

The decision by Arlen Specter to “cross the aisle” and become a Democrat has drawn a pretty broad array of reactions from a variety of interested parties. Some folks like Rush Limbaugh and Ross Douthat have deemed the defection good riddance to bad rubbish. While others like Olympia Snowe have tended to see the move as an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party.

Specter himself seemed to assess the situation as equal parts realpolitik and principles. In part he acknowledged that he had taken a good hard look at the polling data and the hospitality he’d been receiving from the Party and saw the writing on the wall. On the flip side, he has spent a good deal of time pointing the finger folks like the Club for Growth, whose hard line stances he says have been steadily and surely pushing Republican moderates out of the Party for some time now.

In turning the various factors over in my own mind, I found that I encountered a surprising amount of contradiction in my own thinking.

I’ve made no bones about my own distaste for the direction in which the Republican Party seems to be headed; as much as I might be interested in the potential applications of conservative ideology as a piece to our every expanding political puzzle, I, along with pretty much everyone on this site, find the current formulation of movement conservatism to be simply unpalatable. In that regard, I suppose it is true that we don’t cover ever single inch of the political spectrum.

And so, on some level I can’t fault Specter for jumping from that sinking ship, from a particular angle it would appear the only sane thing to do. And, of course, I have spent no small amount of time on this site bemoaning the trappings of an overtly ideological perspective. I have also refused to articulate my own placement in a particular political camp for fear of short circuiting a process of political discourse that I see as not only important, but in many regards as vital to the functioning of any democracy. So one might expect that upon hearing news of Arlen Specter’s decision to jump ranks I could hardly contain the urge to jump to my feet and shout, “Yeah! You go boy!”

One would be wrong in that assumption. [Read more →]

Just to make Freddie and E.D. feel a little bit better about the degree of pro-Israel group think about which they have written prolifically, the US isn’t the only place where controversial views that fall out of line with Israeli messaging will get you shut out. [Read more →]

It seems in some circles that the cool thing to do is to brand a certain category of writers and thinkers with whom you disagree as nothing more than Andrew Sullivan wannabes, fallen lock-step with his Borg-like proclamations of conservative impropriety, in whose analysis nary a critical bone can be located. Such argumentation has certainly been hurled at the doorstep of this site with somewhat increasing frequency, giving me cause to examine it in more detail.

I have been an out-of-the-closet fan of Andrew Sullivan from the first semi-coherent note I posted on Facebook over a year ago that launched my foray into blogging. It was Sullivan’s often cited long-form essay on Barack Obama that simultaneously caused me to get off the fence in regards to Obama v. Clinton, develop an interest in expressing myself in political discourse, and take an immediate interest in how Sullivan was doing the same. Often not present in quite the same way when one reads his blogging output, what blew me away in the essay was the interesting and off-the-beaten-path lines of thought that ran through the article, the thoughtful consideration that was offered, and, more prominently on display in his blogging, the intense personal narrative that sought to transcend an article simply about a politician, and provide an account of a man. Following on the heels of my skeptical break with political activism, Sullivan’s was the first writing I had encountered in a while that moved me to action (both mental and physical) on so many different levels.

So I’m disinclined to place much stock in those folks who feel like epitheting via Andrew’s name is a damning criticism of anyone’s writing or thought process, anymore than I am inclined to place much stock in those folks who do the same with, say, Rush Limbaugh’s name. Look, the fact of the matter is that it is a rare (perhaps non-existent) human being who isn’t influenced by someone’s body of work and thought, and the beauty of our modern polities is that we have free rein to decide for ourselves who it is that we choose to be influenced by. The “group think” meme seems to assume that those of us who respect and even — dare I say it? — admire Andrew Sullivan, do so without any speck of criticism for what Andrew says or how he says it. Of course, that simply isn’t true of 99% of the cases, and it certainly isn’t true of this site, where as much criticism gets layed at Andrew’s feet as does praise. [Read more →]

Downblog Freddie kicks up some dust around Mickey Kaus’s liberalism that does a good job of highlighting my points around political labels and productive partisanship. Now, please don’t mistake my brevity for glibness, but to the question of whether Mickey Kaus is a liberal or not my answer is a patented: who cares?

I can’t see questioning Kaus’ liberal bona fides as anything other than barking up the wrong tree.

Does Kaus have worthwhile ideas? Does he contribute to political discourse in meaningful ways? Is he someone who is actually interested in an overall project of improvement? If the answer to those questions is “no”, then out on his ear as Freddie may please. If the answer is “yes”, then Kaus can be a liberal, a conservative, or a macadamia nut for all I care, he’s on my team even if I disagree with him 99% of the time.

As per pride in ideology? Don’t believe the hype: dissent is the surest barometer of strength.

Mark, via Robert Stacy McCain, provides an incredibly smart analysis of the relationship and current problems between liberals and libertarians. I am inclined to believe that Mark’s analysis is quite correct, but that if libertarians are smart they’ll ignore it and find a way of growing their relationship with liberals in the coming years.

What I think that Mark, and by extension Robert Stacy McCain, assumes is that any relationship between liberals and libertarians must be one of agreement and consensus on issues such that Ross Douthat cast between the two camps in the Clinton years. Allowing a slightly more vituperative tone than I generally assume, it doesn’t wholly surprise me to see McCain assuming that agreement is the only basis for productive political relationship given his entrenched Palin support. While it is perhaps not true of all Palin supporters, it is true of enough that divergence from party line (full-throated support) became grounds in the ideological litmus test for dismissal. In other words, for Palin supporting movement conservatives it seemed as though the watch word in political relationship became obedience.

That unwillingness to find room for, house, or actively encourage dissent and debate in favour of purely partisan posturing sadly seems to have leeched into the way in which House and Senat conservatives see their role unfolding over the next 2-4 four years. By declaring a pre-emptive war on Obama based on their need to see his administration and liberals generally fail, even if that involves an ever greater decline of the country itself, Republicans have essentially abdicated their role in providing a thoughtful opposition to the liberal majority thereby placing a good deal of their rhetoric in question by at least a sizable proportion of the country (though not all by any means). As Andrew Sullivan suggests, the calling card of movement conservatism seems to have become party, not country, first.

That oppositional void stands to be effectively filled by libertarians as the watchdog against the very real liberal overreach to which Mark points. Not only is such watchdogism a role that libertarians are uniquely positioned to fulfill at this point in time, it also happens to be a badly needed element to the intelligent functioning of a republic like America. Mark writes,

Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends.  This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.

Contra to Mark’s suggestion, I think the only real way for libertarians to effectively exert a cautionary force is to flood the Democratic party and drive the internal debate on the best way forward. The continued corruption of the Republican brand has effectively shuttered routes through the GOP as a means of applying pushback and the libertarians to which Mark refers are likely to be conflicted about such routes at the best of times. Third party routes have consistently resulted in rhetorical laryngitus and romantic as the notion may strike many, libertarians who are serious about assuming control of a meaningful political lever will have to accept the bitter balance of strategy and principle.

What remains then, at least to my mind, is a relationship of “friendly antagonism” with liberals and progressives within the Democratic Party itself. Thouhg perhaps deeply counter intutitive, this route provides the best overall outcome for everyone involved, save perhaps Republicans. Libertarians are able to assume an influential position in American politics that may eventually provide them with the kind of critical legitimacy to make a future third party run anything more than a flight of fancy. Liberals and Democrats, though they might not be inclined to see it this way, benefit from an overall strengthening of their Party and the options they present to the country through the only factor that has ever strengthenedpolitical parties: principled dissent. And the country benefits from ideological juxtaposition and discussion that is grounded in sincerity and first principles, rather than partisan jockeying and power politics.

Of course, few sane betting men would lay money down on my wager and I don’t fool myself into beliveing that the above is an even remotely likely outcome. But here at the League I’m tend to be in the business of beneficial possibilities, as much as predictive pronouncements — and all wagers are of a gentlemanly nature.