Reflections on the Election in Great Britain

Apparently, David Cameron's Tories are falling behind the Liberal Democrats in Britain's May elections. I am not sure how to feel about this. There have been conservatives (or "conservatives" of the compassionate variety, such as David Frum and Joe Scarborough) lining up to support Cameron in the United States and conservatives (or "conservatives" of the anti-tax fundamentalist variety) who have been lining up to use Cameronism as a punching bag. Personally, I have very little respect for David Cameron and don't believe for a second that his "Cameronism" is a sustainable social project. (If, on the campaign trail, President Obama had so much as suggested that Saul Alinsky was an inspiration to him, then his campaign would have been in trouble; and yet, Cameron opening embraces Alinsky in his speeches and campaign documents.)

That being said, I am not sure how I feel about the conservatives falling behind in Britain. My primary reason for embracing a Tory victory would be that, while I don't believe Cameronism is sustainable, I don't believe that Cameronism is sustainable; in short, I am curious to see it tested. That being said, if Tories did lose, it might put to rest the notion of certain conservatives in America that Cameronism is the future; there are thinking conservatives who have, more or less, embraced certain aspects of Cameronism via Philip Blond's Red Toryism (see Front Porch Republic), but most mainstream recommendations for emulation (see FrumForum) have ended in policy proposals that sound like the Diet Coke version of the Democratic platform.

Anyway, their are pluses and minuses for both electoral outcomes; I'm just glad that I'm not a citizen of that country because I honestly have no idea which way I would vote.

Image from the Dictatorship of Venezuela's "Elected Leader" (Sean Penn)

The Problem with (Contemporary) Moderates

Most of the media's talk during the past few weeks has concentrated on the problem with partisanship in America. However, I tend to think that it is not the partisans in the senate, but rather the so-called centrists who are doing more damage to American democracy.

Senators who are most frequently praised for bipartisan courage are the ladies from Maine, Arlen Specter (until his recent switch) and Bill Nelson. But since when have they cast a vote that they honestly thought would endanger their chances of reelection with their constituencies?

True, Bill Nelson's poll numbers have sharply declined since he sold his vote to Obamacare, but the Nebraska senator did try very hard to ensure that this would not happen--and, therein, is the problem: the centrist senators cast their votes, at least on the most controversial legislation, through a process of institutionalized bribery.

Olympia Snowe, for example, can sell her vote to the Republicans in exchange for a naval base remaining open or to the Democrats for priority high way work on the routes leading to Portland, but this is a sort of centrism that profiteers off partisanship. Were the senate not in veto-gridlock, there would be no space for this sort of "moderation".

This is not to say that there cannot be moderates with guiding principles. There have been. Senators Moynihan and D'Amato and Governors Casey and (Mitt) Romney all took positions that were somestimes more conservative or liberal than the mainstream of their party or in their state. But they were principled. Regardless of what one thinks of the rightness or wrongness of the positions they took, one could rest assured that these positions had their origin in these men's conscience, not their self-ambition for reelection.

Looking Good for the Fall, but Are They Even in Touch with Their Party Members?

It looks like the Republicans are already going to be heading into trouble if they voice too excessively their support for the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United decision. It turns out that the American people are overwhelmingly supportive of McCain-Feingold. And more importantly, Republican voters are in favor of it by a margin of about sixty percent.

Good-Bayh to All That

It is official: Evan Bayh has announced that he will not seek reelection. This may or may not be a wise move. After all, the mood of the country could easily swing in the opposite direction just as quickly as it has, as of recent, swung from left to right. The Republicans aren't particularly trusted right now, and it is telling that they are running not as "Republicans" but rather as "outsiders".

The more interesting question that the Evan Bayh retirement raises is this: President Obama more or less hung Democrats in moderate districts out to dry with his health care and cap-and-trade legislation. Is it possible that Bayh will return the favor and mount a primary challenge against Obama in 2011? It all depends on the mood of the country, but if it continues to shift rightward, I would rule it out.

The Obligatory Post on the Massachusetts Thing

No one thought the Sox could win, and they did. No one thought the Republicans could win, and they did. Massachusetts does still have a few tricks up its sleave.

The President's New Afghanistan Policy

I finally got around to watching at least part of the speech at West Point in which President Obama announced his new Afghanistan policy. I had already, to some degree, formed an opinion before watching it, so I'll just lay out my thoughts on the matter: Do I support his Afghanistan policy? Yes. I don't find the timeline to be particularly tasteful (considering that Al Qaeda and the Taliban could lie low until the United States begins to withdraw), but President Obama knew that a surge in Afghanistan of any sort would be controversial with his party's far-left wing. He did it anyway. I think that's something that we can all admire. This doesn't mean that I have any intension of becoming an Obama supporter; I still disagree with him on 90% of the major issues, and, even though the surge plan is the most courageous decision, I can only pray that it is also the best one. That being said, this might make for an interesting chapter should anyone ever decide to write Profiles in Courage 2.

Lou Dobbs for President?

According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 25th) Lou Dobbs is considering a run for the White House. Has he NO mercy?

On the Pleasures of Civic Irresponsibility

Thank God I'm in the 28th--and not the 23rd Congressional District of New York; otherwise, I might feel obligated to get out and vote tomorrow.

On the Ridiculousness of Obama's Peace Prize

Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is remarkable: Remarkable because the Nobel Prize Committee has just hit a new low. I don't know when it began (though I suspect that it was when Jimmy Carter won the award earlier in the decade) but the Nobel Peace Prize has simply become a passive aggressive cleaver with which the Parliament of Sweden comments on American foreign policy. If nothing else, I suppose, it demonstrates that America still has a huge impact on the world. The Nobel Prize Committee is apparently so concerned that they have awarded the prize to a president in advance, based on what he has said he will do, rather than what he has done.

Follow-up on the Last Post

I should note that, last night, I left a cordial but critical comment on a column by a certain "Daily Mail" columnist. I took issue with his claim that neoconservatives were "uninterested in greater social and cultural issues". The comments on his site are monitored and, somewhat oddly, I didn't notice that he had published my comment on his blog. I'll just say here, then, that anyone familiar with the politics outlined in Irving Kristol's "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea" knows neoconservatism began largely as a reaction to the secularized Burkeanism of Michael Oakeshott; it was precisely because the "intellectual" conservatives like Oakeshott and the Rockefeller Republicans were unwilling to confront the great moral questions of the era and because the populist conservatives of the South thought the great moral issue of the era was the protection of segregation that neoconservatives saw the need to find a third way for conservative politics; a third way that could criticize the moral catastrophes of the mid-twentieth century not from the perspective of the Romanticized Last Man of Yesterday or the Utopian New Man of Tomorrow but from the perspective of the informed mind of the present who could judge current crises according to the wisdom of the past while also avoiding its failures. Neoconservatism, once again, made present issues into moral issues.

Neoconservatism: Why It Is Still Valuable Today

The death of Irving Kristol has brought forth a number of pieces on the origins of neoconservatism. This is good; since the beginning of the Iraq War until now, neoconservatism has come to refer to anyone who dared support the Iraq War. (Does this mean that Gordon Brown is a neoconservative, anyone?)

These recent articles will, hopefully, put such legends to rest. It is true that some of those associated with Kristol--not the least of which his son, William--have been among the war's most avid supporters and also that support for robust foreign policy was a key tenant to Kristol's move toward conservatism (though application of this foreign policy is open to debate.) But the central tenent to neoconservatism was always its skepticism of human pretensions, whether these came in the form of Stalin's show trials or Johnson's Great Society.

Because of this skepticism, however, neoconservatism was critical of every ideology, not the least of which some of the ideolgical hacks of the Right (rather than those who, like myself, were content to be conservative rather than Conservatives.) These hacks all had different names and interests: the John Birch Society, Governor George Wallace and the segregationist South, Ross Perot and his protectionist Reform Party.

Neoconservatives on the other hand were willing to take to heart Burke's counsel that the society without the means for reform was without the means for its own preservation. Government could only rule in the present; it could not push the people forward toward a utopian future or pull them backward toward an ephereal past.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, Kant says, nothing straight has ever been made; this truth was at the core of Irving Kristol's political philosophy, and today, when America has put in the White House a man who promises to create a kingdom "right here on earth," all citizens would do well to view this idealism with the same skepticism as that of Kristol. Humanity may be crooked, but not all that is beautiful is straight.

I doubt that the media will ever even report the victim's name:

"Local officials and state police are confirming that a pro-life advocate was shot and killed outside a high school in this Michigan town. The person, who is described as well-known but whose identity has not been released, was shot multiple times while protesting abortion outside Owosso High School.

"Officials say the shooting occurred at 7:30 a.m. local time and most students were inside the school building at the time of the incident.

"State police have also confirmed they apprehended a suspect about 8:15 a.m at the suspect’s home in this small community northeast of Lansing."

On the Passing of Sen. Kennedy

The Wall Street Journal's op-ed section had an interesting take on the career of Edward Kennedy (though it sounded a bit overly critical for an obituary); the Journal noted that Kennedy was a senator of conviction rather than what Hilary Clinton once termed a politician of 'the possible'. Edward Kennedy always was motivated by ideals, even though he was willing to take the long way around to get there (whether it was admitting higher test-score standards in the case of No Child Left Behind or authoring comprehensive immigration reform bills with Sen. John McCain.)

Whether his ideals (which evolved occasoinally and were not always consistent) were correct or not is an entirely different matter. The most important part of his legacy was his ability to fight for them. By this standard, his legacy may prove the most enduring of all of the Kennedy brothers (though he will probably always be the least glamorous). John F. Kennedy was an effective president, but his talents derived more from his willingness to move with the tide as his ability to impose his will upon it. Robert Kennedy--had he lived and been elected to the presidency--probably would have tried to bring more idealism than prudence to the White House, but that was a reality that never materialized.

Edward Kennedy's legacy, if nothing else, should probably be in demonstrating that it is not the politician who governs from the center that moves history, but rather the politician with the charisma to define where the center is. Kennedy may have moved that center in the wrong direction, but, in the broad narrative of history, it probably won't matter. What else can one say but requiscat in pacem.

Initial Reactions to the Ensign + Sanford Thing

With both Ensign and Sanford realizing that their political futures are in shambles, one has to ask, are there any Republicans who are not having an affair now? If so, please stand up. Of course, calling for Sanford to resign might not be the best idea now. His state is not in such good shape so changing governors does not seem like such a good plan (unless he disappears again.) As for Ensign, it would probably be best for everyone if he resigned from the senate. After he so vigorously crusaded for the resignation of President Clinton and Senator Craig, what can one say but "he has no credibility now"?

Thoughts on Totalitarianism in the Twenty-First Century

I've been exchanging emails with a friend recently on the subject of government, culture, totalitarianism, etc. Here's the latest thing I added to the mix for anyone who's interested:

I wanted to read "Fahrenheit 451" before responding. I have done so. Bradbury, like Huxley before him, was very prescient in seeing the threat of passive despotism in a society; by passive despotism, I don't mean the type the seeks to create a New Man, but rather a variety of despotism that is created to govern once the New Man has been created. Of course, because this sort of despotism adapts to cultural change rather than forcing the culture to change according to its abstract goals--as in countries like the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China--the illiberalism of the system does not manifest itself to any but the outsiders of the society.

The claim that "we are left with democracy" I think is true, with some qualification, but the most important follow-up question, for me, would be how we are to protect democracy from becoming a tyranny of the mob. This question isn't a new one; nearly two centuries ago, de Tocqueville wrote of how democracy tended toward passive totalitarianism: "In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he dares to leave them. It is not that he has to fear an auto-da-fe, but he is the butt of mortifications of all kinds and persecutions every day . . . He yields, he finally bends under the effort of each day and returns to silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth" (244).

This, for me, underlines one of the fundamental flaws of democracy: It trivializes recognition. Dissidents like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Natan Sharansky could oppose autocratic regimes, and, in cases like these, their imprisonment confirmed their relevance to the cause of freedom. But what about parents in present-day Germany who are imprisoned for homeschooling their children? What about people like Liinda Gibbons in Canada who are imprisoned for protesting permissive abortion policies? In cases like this, the abuse of power would seem apparent to most classical liberals and conservatives, but the abuse is not inconsistent with the General Will of the nations whose governments perpetrate the action.

To summarize, totalitarianism failed in the West in the twentieth century because partisan elites tried to create a New Man through deeply flawed belief systems (such as communism and Nazism). In the twenty-first century, we may very well see a totalitarianism with all of the opposite characteristics: absent will be the near-religious devotion that either of these two ideologies inspired in its adherents; there need be no talk of revolution, culture or even the New Man because under such a totalitarianism all of these could be assumed. A government does not need to create a New Man if he already exists. The disturbing part, though, is that the success or failure of this sort of totalitarianism is, from what I can tell, indeterminate.

Why I Am Not an Agrarian

This paragraph is taken somewhat out of context, but I think that it's a pretty good summation of my uneasiness with traditional (i.e. paleo-, though this term is a bit impolite) conservatism:

There’s always been something unrealistically romantic about too much emphasis on place and memory in America. Not so far from where I live there was a town -- Cassville, GA -- that, by 1860, was extremely well settled, had several serious institutions of learning, and certain sorts of aristocratic traditions that are still remembered by those who care about that stuff. It wasn’t even there until 1840 -- it was founded in the wake of the pretty anti-communitarian Cherokee removal that’s part of our wonderful southern heritage -- and it was devastated by the Civil War. Community came and went with almost blinding speed, as it has done often in our country’s history. (Consider also, if you want, how quickly the Cherokees transformed themselves into good [slaveholding sometimes], agrarian Americans, with their really deep traditions both adapting and sometimes disappearing.)

Peter Lawler, Postmodern Conservative

This is not to say that I completely object to the agrarian ideals of place, belonging, connection, but it is a telling fact that most of the famous agrarians did not choose this life, even when they could have done so--Wendell Berry, for instance, is a farmer and lives off the land, but he does not have to depend on the land for his sustenance. (And neither did his father, from whom he inherited the land.) But Wendell Berry is the closest that individuals come to living up to their ideals. Many other agrarian idealists are professors, writers, doctors, etc. Men who farm as a hobby. Or not at all.

I would say it is inappropriate to be unfairly judgmental. After all, men like these are necessary for the message of agrarianism to reach the people. But most farmers I have met are hardly distinguishable from the rest of us, once they cross the city's boarders, and it is moments when I meet the real farmer they I begin to suspect that agrarianism is a romantic notion which distracts us from the crooked timber of . . . reality.

Where Are We Headed?

Conservatives thought that when the nation elected Barack Obama it was the final surrender to the New Left ethos that emerged during the 1960s. But what if we are seeing the re-institutionalization of liberalism instead? What if--because of a decline in religious practice--people instead begin to adopt the Kantian ideology of duty-for-duty's sake? What if we are seeing a retread of Victorianism (though it be altered by history)?

On Torture

I hadn't planned on posting for a few days, but then the memos of the past administration's torture practices were released. What can one say but disgusting, simply disgusting. If Republicans want to save themselves from themselves and hope to mention Cuba's sorry record on "human rights" without being laughed out of the room, then they might begin by publicly denouncing not only these policies, but also the people who implemented them.

From Individual Conscience to Tax Boycotts

The vast majority of people pay for social programs and public policies to which they object, and, while most objections are raised for pragmatic reasons, taxes also support programs and policies which many people object to in good conscience (e.g. regime change in Iraq, sex education, even public schooling). This is problematical in any society in which freedom of conscience is an assumed--if also unwritten--precept, but a simple boycott on these taxes is no resolution to the issue.

More than half of the America people have adopted the position that the War in Iraq was a mistake. (Admittedly, more than half supported the war in 2003, but this still makes for tens of millions of citizens who would have preferred avoiding a war fought under the circumstances and principles which were used to justify the invasion of Iraq.) Still, if those who opposed the war in Iraq claim that, because of their position on the war, they should be free to maintain their freedom of conscience by withholding taxes, this may very well introduce an inconvenient precedent: if opposition to one war is reason enough for some citizens to withhold federal taxes, then opposition to any war could be reason enough for other citizens to withhold a similar portion of their income. While this may seem reasonable in the case of Iraq, examples grow more extreme: Should it have applied to former members of the German American Federation, or what about the Copperheads and their supporters? Maybe. But, if nothing else, it is fair to say that cases exist in which this form of dissent would not only be contrary to national interest, but also national survival.

Furthermore, because conscience is held privately and its content is unknown to all but the individual who possesses it, allowing for a conscience-driven boycott on taxes also opens an unintended loop-hole for citizens who merely want to pay lower taxes: While they may or may not oppose a particular war, they know that they oppose their marginal tax rate and, based on this, make their conscience a handmaiden of their financial desires. Many would sincerely wish to withhold taxes in good conscience; the problem is that there is no empirical way of differentiating the sincere from the scoundrels.

This has covered the pragmatic dimension of the issue, but theoretical reasons also exist for opposing tax-boycotts as a form of dissent: any political nation (as opposed to a natural nation with common language and culture but no governing body) is in some way responsible for assigning roles, either through allowance (in which case citizens find their natural positions) or draft (in which case citizens are assigned their positions, natural or otherwise). Generally, the purpose of government is to allow citizens to live in an environment in which they do not have to struggle to maintain their life, liberty and property, but, for this to work in a nation which is larger than an organic community, procedures are necessary for effective government.

American political procedure calls for the executive branch to wage and manage war and the legislative branch to approve or disapprove the declaration of war as well as the funding for duration of it. But both branches of government are elected; in a sense, government of the people, by the people, for the people is still reflected in national procedure, though these procedures are debatably muddled by contemporary forms of media or education. As such, individual opinion is best expressed through the ballot box, rather than through the absence of tax payments. There is no need to conduct a passive revolution because the people are capable of conducting and active (though peaceful) one every two years.

Naturally, this argument assumes that the individual's actions--in a political context--should be subordinate to the will of the community (elections express semi-general will, not individual will), so it is worth inquiring into whether or not this is a valid assumption. Indeed, one may be a crowd, but the very notion of a society--as opposed to a community--is based upon solidarity and cooperation. Government may be meant to insure rights (as was indicated before) but it also exists to curtail the arbitrary freedom or license of the powerful or malevolent (if nothing else, it is nice to know that, if someone sets fire to your house, the fire brigade will show up). Since all benefit from the government performing this task, it is just that all who benefit from the performance help sustain it. The option does remain of going into physical exile (i.e. going abroad) or civic exile (i.e. moving to an American Indian reservation or an Amish community); this is to say that, while boycotting taxes is not an ethical civic option, individual citizens are not exonerated from the moral implications of civic action. It is simply that the morality of the question gives rise to other (more difficult but also more pointed) moral choices.

I realize that I have not devoted much space to the moral side of the question. What, for instance, is it that allows the Amish to refrain from paying taxes to causes that they consider to be unjust whereas a Methodist may also oppose the Iraq War but still has to pay to finance it? One of the reasons was already indicated: the Amish community does not sit under the government's aegis in the same capacity as do other opponents of the war. But also categorical imperative needs to be taken into consideration when the government determines who is or is not exempt. A Methodist or a Catholic may believe that a particular war is inconsistent with his beliefs, but to justify boycotting his taxes, he has to be sure. The only mode of assurance is to articulate an hermeneutic by which it is not only possible to judge the Iraq War as unjust but by which it is also possible to judge every war--or at least every war of a clearly identifiable category--as unjust.

Theories of ius ad bellum would seem to help in these circumstances, but they often only add two additional levels of complexity; first, because the theory needs to be interpreted (always a controversial matter) and, second, because the universal theory then needs to be applied to a particular context. This latter task becomes particularly difficult in a case like that of the War in Iraq: No one can really agree on whether the purpose of the war was to destroy Iraq's WMD program (which turned out not to exist) or to make the Middle East safe for democracy. Unless an individual is willing to accept total pacifism, his rationalizations will almost inevitably devolve into opinion rather than irrefutable fact.

As is indicated by the above argument, there are cases in which boycotting taxes is an appropriate action (i.e. when not doing so would perpetuate action which was in direct violation of a moral absolute), but individual conscience is only the first criterion for a boycott. In other words, individual conscience can only take precedence over an action judged necessary when both an individual and the society can agree that the individual's views on a particular issue on incontrovertible; opinion, however strong, is not good enough.