“In short, liberals and conservatives refuse to see the areas in which they have common ground because far too often they simply cannot get past the cultural markers that prevent them from even listening to the substance of what their cultural opposites are saying.” ~ Mark Thompson

In this post Mark is responding to what he sees as Jamelle’s assertion that the “hidden” welfare state is bad, whereas the “visible” welfare state is good.  Essentially Mark is asserting that liberals attempt to build the visible welfare state on top of the hidden welfare state, whereas libertarians and conservatives try to make the hidden welfare state smaller and more visible.

Now, I think this is not really what Jamelle was saying.  I think Jamelle was saying that we have a welfare state and that many Americans both appreciate the services that this state provides while at the same time not really realizing that it’s a welfare state providing them – the whole “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” thing.  He’s saying that Americans exist in an illusion of free markets and bootstraps while in reality we have a very large state apparatus which provides safety nets, subsidies, and numerous other benefits to countless people and businesses.  What he’d like to do is make that more obvious so that people appreciated it more and then, in turn, supported a further expansion of the welfare state once they realized what a good thing it, in fact, was.  Contra Jamelle, conservatives and libertarians would like to draw down the welfare state because they see it – whether it is visible or hidden – as an encroachment upon liberties, upon the economy, and upon prosperity, job growth, and so forth.  These two goals are entirely at odds.

So I don’t think that it is simply a cultural barrier which prevents liberals and libertarians/conservatives from working together.  I think it is a fundamental political difference in core beliefs about the size and scope of the welfare state which separates the two groups.

But it’s also the culture.  After all, politics is secondary to culture.  Cultural beliefs and norms and expectations drive politics – not the other way around. While political shifts can lead to shifts in culture, this is usually unintentional. Mark is certainly correct that it is the cultural divide more than anything which keeps liberals and conservatives from forming a united front, but then again that isn’t the whole story.  I think some groups of conservatives or libertarians could align quite nicely with specific elements of the left.  We’ve seen such an alliance in economics, actually, with the stronger elements of both the right and the left embracing free trade.  But the Tea Party right and the progressive anti-corporate, anti-free-trade left have much less of a chance at uniting because of the vast, gaping cultural divide between the two sides.

Can you honestly see Glenn Beck and Michael Moore coming together on many issues?  Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich may both be united in their opposition to many more mainstream bills and practices in Congress, but when it comes to their political goals the two are – save perhaps on foreign policy – complete opposites.  Their ultimate goals may be similar – a more honest government, working harder for the people and not for the elites and the corporations – but Kucinich and the progressives believe this can be done with a bigger state and smaller private sector, whereas Paul believes that the state is at the heart of the issue and should be dismantled as much as possible.

I’m very drawn to Mark’s liberaltarian cause, and to the idea of the sides working together in this way.  I’m just perhaps too cynical to believe in it.  I myself am rather a mixed bag and can find common cause with both elements.  But most people in these groups are not mixed bags. They’re die-hard partisans.  And they don’t like each other much, or at least what the other stands for and believes in – especially culturally, but politically too.

Wow, anyone who says they wouldn’t be interested in seeing how this would play out is just lying.

Conor thinks it’s a good sign that “prudent conservatives and libertarians are growing uncomfortable with Mr. Beck’s rhetoric.”  I agree, but for entirely different reasons.

Here’s Beck on his radio show, taking the Southpark parody rather well I think. [Read more →]

The interesting thing about Glenn Beck is that aside from being completely crazy, his substantive views on policy (if someone like Beck can be described as having substantive views on anything) are about as far as you can get from doctrinaire Republicanism. In a widely circulated post from last week, Glenn Greenwald explains how Beck gives voice to transpartisan anti-establishment sentiment. Andrew Sullivan has also noticed that Beck’s foreign policy views – a mish-mash or “more rubble, less trouble” and nascent non-interventionism – differ substantially from conservative orthodoxy.

So while Republican congressmen may ape Beck’s anti-establishment rhetoric, they don’t come close to endorsing the substance of his libertarian-ish views. Similarly, Beck’s newfound suspicion of the Patriot Act or his isolationist rhetoric have not exactly caught fire with the RNC.

Movement organs have been willing to promote Beck’s crusade against ACORN and his attack on former green jobs czar Van Jones, however. In the grand scheme of things, these issues are incredibly trivial, but they allow the Republican Party to channel popular enthusiasm into an issue that doesn’t highlight the profound differences between people who sympathize with Beck’s anti-establishment rhetoric and people who basically buy into Republican Party orthodoxy. Liberals have correctly noted that the ACORN sting and the resignation of a minor administration functionary aren’t really that important, which is precisely why movement operatives are so eager to latch on to them. Trumpeting Beck’s hidden camera antics is a way for Republicans to coopt libertarian/conservative populism without making any real concessions to the genuinely radical critique embodied by the Tea Party Movement.

I read Steven Hayward’s article on intellectual conservatism with some interest, mainly because I thought Hayward – as a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard – would have enough movement credibility to convincingly argue that talk radio populists aren’t conservatism’s best standard bearers. The substance of this critique has been around for awhile, and anyone who frequents this site is probably already familiar with the case against Happy Meal Conservatism. Hayward’s article, however, seems tailor-made for a skeptical audience – unlike perennial talk radio-bashers David Frum or Andrew Sullivan,  he is incredibly (some would say overly) solicitous of the Becks and Limbaughs of the world. The piece makes no mention of Beck’s questionable history, praises his “intellectual curiosity,” and readily acknowledges the importance of conservatism’s populist roots.

So it was depressing to hear the exact same epithets that are routinely hurled at a Sullivan or a Frum directed at Hayward, who was immediately derided as elitist and out of touch with the movement’s grassroots for criticizing conservative populism. The closest I’ve come to finding an actual refutation of Hayward’s arguments is from Redstate’s Erick Erickson, who seems to have given up on defending the conservative movement’s intellectual bona fides in favor of denying that a lack of carefully thought-out policy ideas is a problem in the first place.

It is not surprising to read the Right’s vituperative reaction to, say, David Brooks’ latest column on talk radio. Whatever his faults, Brooks, at least, has never been a movement hack. But if people aren’t willing to give someone like Hayward a respectful hearing, I wonder what it will take to convince the base that following Levin, Limbaugh and Beck off a cliff isn’t a blueprint for conservative revival. At this point, one suspects that if Glenn Beck renounced his talk radio populism tomorrow, he would immediately be dismissed as a traitorous elitist.

I don’t generally find myself lined up with the likes of Michael Moore, but I can’t help feeling a certain sense of camaraderie with the sentiments he recently expressed to Democrats like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad,

To the Democrats in Congress who don’t quite get it: I want to offer a personal pledge. I – and a lot of other people – have every intention of removing you from Congress in the next election if you stand in the way of health care legislation that the people want[.]

One has to always be careful with and wary of the use of phrases like, “the people”, of course. Moore can’t possibly think (or at least certainly shouldn’t think) that every single Democratic voter, let alone the moniker of all Americans to which a catch-all like, “the people” might point, are supportive of a public option in the way that he and those who agree with him are. But it remains true that for all the controversy and haggling, there is reasonable base of support for the public option amongst Americans.

Given that support, the kind of galling concern-trollery one hears coming from the lips of Max Baucus sort of begs to be met with war cries. To the point I made last Friday, there is a troublesome disingenuous in the studied ballet of Baucus’ political pirouettes that has left many wondering what the real intentions at play here are. Politics as the art of the possible notwithstanding, do we really know what is possible before even trying or in the facing of hedging against possible outcomes from the outset of the debate? [Read more →]

Update: at the first Over Cigars informal conversation, I give a bit more of an explanation (albeit a short one) around the impetus for this post, why I’m not against Limbaugh, Beck, et al, per se, and yet why I remained concerned about the dynamics behind their current influence.

I’ll try to update again tonight on this post addressing some of the good points commenters have made (busy day).

Via Sullivan and Yglesias, I see that various talking heads of the right seem to have initiated the age old dance of cannibalism,

“I don’t rally people and haven’t since the first year of my radio show,” he wrote to POLITICO. “At that time, all local talk hosts were attempting to prove their worth by getting people to cut up gasoline credit cards, call Washington, etc. I thought it was cheap and disingenuous. The few times I did, early on, suggest people call Washington, the reaction to it from the media was that the response was not genuine (I shut down the House switchboard) because people only did what they did because ‘Limbaugh told them to.”

As well as, and more explicitly,

“To say [McCain] would be worse [than Obama] is mindless, mindless, incoherent as a matter of fact. [...] I think there’s enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it’s not. It’s pathetic,”

It would be easy, of course, to sit on the sidelines and take in the sights with a bowl of popcorn in hand, but I think there is a larger dynamic at play here that warrants consideration. Namely, your choice of old adages that either, “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” or, “Things will always get worse, before they get better.” Each means essentially the same thing, so take your pick, but it strikes me that beyond the kind of jeering that a tripartite battle between Levin, Limbaugh, and Beck  would obviously draw from some corners, the intra-nature of the fighting is an important sign to those of us ever disgruntled with personality based politics. [Read more →]

Two things about this post from Peter Wehner at Commentary.  I couldn’t agree more that Beck doesn’t represent the “disposition” we want associated with conservatism.  But far more interesting is this: [Read more →]

Listen, it’s not particularly popular to come to the defense of Glenn Beck’s 9/12ers around these parts, but while I was watching this video linked over at the Daily Dish I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “These folks are angry and on some level I get that anger”. [Read more →]

I know I just said stop talking about the talking heads – but I think that Jack Hunter is on to something in this post.

First off, let me just say that before Beck moved to Fox I watched him on CNN occasionally, and to be quite frank – I actually enjoyed his show.  He seemed like a decently smart guy who was maybe just a bit over the top in a few areas – perhaps a bit too passionate about self-reliance and such (he often had Mr Self-Reliance himself – Ted Nugent – on his show).  He didn’t seem as divisive as many other talking heads, though, and he was entertaining and bright.

When he debuted on Fox he was a changed man.  “Melodrama” is the word Jack uses, and that’s exactly right.  Melodrama, wild-eyed conspiracy theories, shock value.  And yet… [Read more →]

Guess what?  Talk radio hosts and cable tv stars like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck say crazy, paranoid, flame-baiting, stupid, awful things.  Surprise!

They do it for the ratings.  It’s a ploy that is very, very successful.  It works on the right a lot better than on the left for sociological reasons beyond my understanding.  It makes the television and radio broadcasters a great deal of money.  It makes the stars a great deal of money.  And they get fantastic pulpits from which they can grind out their populist ire, churning up whatever angst or fear already exists amongst the grassroots fans who adore them.  They lie, they exaggerate, they race-bait and call names.  They represent the lowest form of debate.

And it’s high time we stopped talking about them.  [Read more →]