Fiscal Responsibility: Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.
Constitutionally Limited Government: We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent. Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.
Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government’s interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.
One good thing is: taking personal liberty as far as the principle so stated above does put the kibosh on the social conservative agenda. As for eliminating government intervention, I suppose this would be an interesting experiment, inasmuch as the elimination of all intervention would include elimination of every last cent of corporate welfare.
My argument is simply the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land and a law has to say what it means and mean what it says. This does not allow for ‘changing interpretations based on the times and societal needs’. Source: New Patriot Journal. What We Want Part II.
Take the time and gather up the argument here. It’s enough to hint that one can’t hang a logical argument on the skeleton of a particular–and singular–normative meaning, when this itself is subject to interpretation. (Alternately, the founders didn’t provide the necessary strict guidance–they never ratified the equivalent of “this bible is only to mean what it literally means.” )
Peyton Colorado’s whacky interpretation hits its lowest point when he caps an argument against direct election of Senators with:
So, if we are truly asking for the restoration of constitutional rule in these United State then repeal of the XVIIth amendment must happen.
You mean, Peyton, the XVIIth amendment isn’t a superb example of constitutional rule?
I’m going to relish watching the principles of conservatism clash with anti-elitist populism. After all, the whole edifice of conservatism is built upon the olden foundation of strict elitism. I don’t see how of conservatism’s philosophical thought leaders–such as Aristotle, Burke, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss–can be re-interpreted to be advocates of anti-elitism and of the wisdom of mobs.
Finally Michelle Bachman echoes what Sarah Palin told Sean Hannity, when Bachman wrote the following in an otherwise mendacious fund-raising piece.
Americans will be prevented by Big Government from relying on our own wits, ingenuity, and hard work to take care of ourselves.
As Obama said during the campaign, ‘the ownership society – you’re on your own.’ Yet, this idea of Bachman’s is the entire crux of the Tea Party’s eruption.
Alex Gibney, director of the new film Casino Jack (& The United States of Money,) also Oscar-winning director of “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” interviewed here by Andrew O’Hehir (Salon-link)
Key capture:
“the free market agenda that intends to destroy government”
This phrase leaps out because I’ve long wondered how philosophical Conservatism, unfettered capitalism, and, Judeo-Christian morality are ever reconciled.
In 2006 the filmmaker Danny Shechter produced the little-seen documentary, In Debt We Trust. It’s at your library, folks. So is Gibney’s Enron, the Smartest Boys In the Room. Leslie and Andrew Cockburn released their documentary American Casino last year.
II.
It was a delicious moment when Justice Alito seemed perturbed at Obama stating the obvious during the SOTU. Sure, the majority affirmed the principal of free speech in certain terms.
“When Government seeks to use its full power, including includingthe criminal law, to command where a person may get hisor her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
But in this decision the majority morphed into activist* proponents of a living Constitution.
But might we not come to a point in the future where corporate money rallies to support ‘their’ law-and-order candidate so as to assure order against a surge in disorder provoked by severely economically beleaguered masses?
* There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations. The Framers may not have anticipated modern business and media corporations. (pg.44, CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION)
If James Madison were around, would he endorse concentration of power and wealth?
The milquetoast, kinder-and-gentler conservative NYT editorialist David Brooks delivered another brightly burning ideational bulb today. Man, I wish he had had the time to show it to the missus first!
It is all downhill after this tipping point, reached in the piece’s fourth sentence:
Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.The Populist Addiction – NYT – 1/26:2010
Brooks wants to bracket his main point with, as it turns out, a nonsensical treatment of populism. He’s made this main point previously in a review Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. This review, titled Creating Capitalism, was published in April 2004 in the NYT.
From the review,
But Hamilton dreamed of a vibrant economy that would allow aspiring meritocrats like himself to rise and realize their full capacities. He sought to smash the aristocratic fiefs enjoyed by Southern landowners like Jefferson and to replace them with a diversified marketplace that would be open to immigrants and the lowborn. Their vigor, he felt, would drive the nation to greatness. ”Every new scene, which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort,” he wrote.
He started a political tradition, dormant in our own day, in which energetic government doesn’t oppose market dynamism but is organized to enhance it. Today our liberal/conservative debates tend to pit the advocates of government against the advocates of the market. Today our politics is dominated by rival strands of populism: the anticorporate populism of the Democrats and the anti-Washington populism of the Republicans. But Hamilton thought in entirely different categories. He argued that ”liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.” He wanted a limited but energetic government that would open fields of enterprise and give new directions to popular passions.
His editorial is a recycle job.
Hamilton championed capital markets and Lincoln championed banks, not because they loved traders and bankers. They did it because they knew a vibrant capitalist economy would maximize opportunity for poor boys like themselves. They were willing to tolerate the excesses of traders because they understood that no institution is more likely to channel opportunity to new groups and new people than vigorous financial markets.
In their view, government’s role was not to side with one faction or to wage class war. It was to rouse the energy and industry of people at all levels. It was to enhance competition and make it fair — to make sure that no group, high or low, is able to erect barriers that would deprive Americans of an open field and a fair chance. Theirs was a philosophy that celebrated development, mobility and work, wherever those things might be generated.
And what was the status and stature of the industrial revolution in the first decade of the 19th century in the U.S.? (Hamilton died in 1804.) What, at the time, was the normal range of ambitions for the average man? ‘open field’ indeed!
Then, having raced downhill, Brooks writes one of the most astonishing sentences of his career:
If they continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital, they will only increase the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job creation and growth.
I’m going to offer an opposing idea: people are certain about the current state of the economy. Many people are certain about who got bent over and who did the bending too.
Ironically, Brooks offers implicit advice, advice perhaps dear to the capitalist’s heart. Last implied by Phil Graham, remember?
Yup, suck it up you whiners–you’re the real problem. ‘Just let us make some more dough now that we’ve managed to eke out a bit more productivity from our lucky surviving workforce.’ After all, Al Hamilton says so, and, let’s face it, we’re really a country about the faction-less dynamism of marching capital.
Sarah Palin fascinates me as a person, personality type, and behavioral specimen. As a ‘psycvhological’ screen for a certain type of ‘main street’ resentment, she’s obvious ideally configured.
Sarah Palin’s ego and ambitions are breathtaking. People have told me: “Palin isn’t qualified to be President!” My reply: “It’s a popularity contest.” A lingering question would be: what kind of brain trust would she put together? How would she be manipulated? What kind of wreckage would be realized given her modest mental talents?
But Palin is not much like Eva Peron. The point of comparison is presumably Peron’s magical hold on her public. But Eva Peron was altogether a more complicated character. Palin obviously isn’t a creature of left populism as was Peron, even if Peron married into something much darker.
“This is not rocket science. We’re talkin’ about going back to the basics of America.”
Of course, the documentarian has the ability to shoot a lot of film, select the most appalling clips, and assemble the horror show above. Similar takes were produced during last year’s campaign to highlight the lack of thoughtfulness of some Obama supporters.
On the other hand, Palin’s core constituency, it would seem, is: the ignorant. Point me in the direction of thoughtfully articulated belief in her capabilities, and I’ll come back tail between my legs.
Among several elements which pop up for me is how Palin seems clueless about both being overmatched, and, about her not getting to specify the terms and context for her encounters with the media. Her reflections to Bill O’Reilly about her being annoyed by Katie Couric, are close to being the most psychologically revealing video of a politician since the time when Dubya froze when asked if ‘there was one mistake he most regretted.’
Yet, just because Palin’s own ‘theory of mind’ is—evidently—completely reflexive, (because she believes everyone is but her foil,) this plugs directly into the circuit of populist paranoia about a pointy-headed elite conspiring to “strip away their freedoms.” So: Palin herself gets to carry that collective projection forward and battle against the dark forces arrayed against so-called real Americans. She’s in way over her head, but that’s an advantage right now in the current, paranoid-delusional environment.
Never mind that Sarah Palin has obtained her own elite status in the scheme of Alaska success stories and is busily working to be a millionaire. Her main street bona fides are modest but her iconic stickiness lives large. In a way, Palin is a celebrity genre unto-herself.
As it is for other celebrated public figure and pundits, I wonder whether, in fact, he or she actually believes their own bullsh*t. Does Glenn Beck really read American history closely? This same reading engenders grandiose delusions such as his “100 Year Plan” to “re-found America.” Likewise, does Palin really think that her restoration of messianic Reaganism will in turn restore real American’s freedoms? In both cases, it could be said that it doesn’t work that way—since it hasn’t worked this way in the past.
Meanwhile, the Republicans once again get to flesh out the imago of a victimized main street, and mount the resentments of a white anti-elite, anti-intellectual, populace gasping for air. Their propositions are incoherent, but it hardly matters because it’s simple work to feed the embittered with talk of their loss of freedoms, the spectre of incipient socialism, and the rise of the personally irresponsible, (i.e. immigrants and minorities.)
It should go without saying that this is only the gambit of the Republican political elite when they’re out of power. Once they come back in power they morph back into Tories, social Darwinists, and go onto to laugh all the way to the bank. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II., didn’t deliver squat to their sacred silent majority. You can look it up.
I try to imagine the most cynical and dangerous Republican ticket in 2012. Easy: Palin/Petreaus. Still, the deranged possibilities are hilarious.
An Economic Agenda for the GOP
Republicans need to be pro-market, not pro-business.
Luigi Zingales, City Journal, Autumn 2009
The success of the Republican platform went well beyond the voting booth, of course. The war against the evil empire brought the collapse of Communism and the democratization of the Soviet Bloc countries. During the Reagan years, the battle against the state led to a negative real growth rate in nondefense public spending. Deregulation freed the economy from excessive constraints and, together with tax cuts, sparked enormous entrepreneurial and creative forces. A golden era of economic growth began in the early eighties and continued, aside from a few minor recessionary interludes, until 2007—a quarter-century of unparalleled prosperity. After the Reagan economic reforms kicked in, the United States grew by an average of 3 percent each year, against Germany’s 1.9 percent, France’s 2.1, and Italy’s 1.8.
Not only did this revolution allow the U.S. to outpace Europe in income and productivity; it also transformed the country from a manufacturing economy into an innovative, high-powered service economy. Today, America does not produce iPhones, but it generates the technology and the design that permit a piece of plastic to sell for $300. It does not manufacture microchips, but it creates the technology that lets some wafers of silicon sell for thousands of dollars apiece. It does not build computers, but it develops the operating systems that run them. This transformation has enabled the United States to face the competition of emerging countries from a position of strength.
Let’s line up just three points.
(A) republican policies had successes too:
1. Deregulation and tax cuts sparked enormous entrepreneurial and creative forces
2. …transformed the country from a manufacturing economy into an innovative, high-powered service economy.
If we overlook the two recessionary bookends (1979-1984 / 2007+) and also overlook the crucial monetary policy—and its consequences—Reagan supported to wring out stagflation after he took office 1981, and, if we don’t know anything about supply side economics, still, #1 and #2 distinguish themselves to be, potentially, bald mythologizing about what ‘economic glories’ Reagan(ism) actually accomplished.
The truth of the matter revolves around another term, trickle-down economics. It’s employed to get at what a true narrative might make explicit: what actually resulted; who were the winners and losers. Is there, from this analysis, anything left of the twin assertions #1 and #2?
Now City Journal has long carved out its position in the rightward intellectual spectrum: seemingly sophisticated conservative cant.
I’ll forgive Zingales his ideological economic control panel, where, if you dial factors in just right, the economy booms. Business cycles exist on large scales and so to isolate ideological adjustments and simply assert. ‘this is how it should work,’ runs into various counterfactual, and the falsifying history. Such as, when the economy comes to boom, yet income tax rates are sky high. Ummm, this has happened.
Zingales’s narrative isn’t about either what happened between 1985-2007, or, what caused those happenings. You could set yourself to the task of figuring out what an accurate narrative would state to be the actuality of economic Reaganism.
I guarantee this accurate narrative would be troubled to serve ideological goals. But, it would be true enough compared to the seemingly sophisticated, anti-intellectual, garden variety posturing and mythologizing Zingales has somehow extracted from the facts.
(Ha. I doubt Zingales gave any consideration to the facts.)
Rates of taxation and regulation may vary, but trickle down remains, for the time being, the core commitment of our executive economic policy making ethos, irrespective of party.
fyi
“innovative, high-powered service economy” didn’t reach Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo, etc.. Economic myth-making can come to instrumentally serve vast money-making regimes, as when it was recently supposed that housing prices would rise forever; that hedges can be perfected; that randomness itself can be mathematically purged from predictions…on and on.
Lessee: selfish social darwinist nihilism–wrapped in self-aggrandizing ‘personal responsibility-with-exceptions pieties, or, help your neighbor, Christian ethics?
That’s easy.
H.R. 3962 squeaks by in the House, with one brave Republican vote. The loner was Joseph Cao, R-La. He told a reporter, “But I felt it was important of me to support the president in this matter because, like I said before, based on my own conscience, it was the right decision for my district.”
Conscience. Compare the existence of Joseph Cao’s conscience with that of Steve King, D-IA. His understanding is that everybody has health coverage because of the existence of emergency rooms! Then all you do is add his prescriptions:
Better ideas for health care reform include full deductibility of medical expenses for all Americans, medical malpractice reform, an increase in Health Savings Account contribution amounts, giving consumers the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, allowing small businesses to band together to negotiate lower costs for themselves and their employees through Association Health Plans and fixing Medicare reimbursements to raise reimbursement rates for states like Iowa that have high quality care at a low cost. These are real solutions that will protect the relationship between patients and doctors and improve the quality of health care in America without raising taxes.
Oh, and protect insurance company profits. After all, isn’t that written somewhere in the bible…? How many Republicans congresspersons have opted out of their own health insurance benefit?
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered all around my cabin door.
Oh, hard times, come again no more.
Sometimes, while channel surfing, my attention latches onto one of the religious channels. I call it ‘doing research.’ Well, it is a guilty pleasure–watching theocrats. (See Frank Schaeffer: Spaceship Jesus Will Come and Whisk Us Away for a good take.) Glenn Beck provides another guilty pleasure, although I depend on Crooks and Liars and MediaMatters to pluck the ripest insanity out of a sea of lunacy.
Beck is a masterful architect, but of what, I’m not sure. He’s not really a polemicist or propagandist in the sense that both those dispositions usually presume coherency. His basic argument is structured as a sort of daft hermeneutics, connecting dots, but doing so incoherently across domains. It all ends up, usually, in the same place: a cabal of Marxist elitists are planning to take over the country and “control every aspect of your life.”
The aspect that evokes cognitive dissonance is Beck’s appeal to freedom from control, while offering at the same time, an analysis that could only be practically powerful were persons to accept it uncritically ‘en mass.’ For Beck, America is free when there is a monotheism of individuality, and if you’re so individuated as to disagree, well then, you’re helping to destroy the country.
What would be the nature and inherent cognitive complexity of someone who would buy Beck’s binary paranoia, who would follow his connected dots to their satisfying conclusion: slaughter or ark? Decades ago I wondered the same thing about who possibly could find Ayn Rand’s insipid version of logical rationality reasonable.*
Jason Richwine, unintentionally unleashing silliness in The American, the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?, ponders anecdotal counter-factuals, while missing the point of Lazar Stankov’s research, Conservatives and Cognitive Ability. Heck, Richwine misses the point even though it’s pointed to in the paper’s title.
Richwine does mention that conservatism isn’t defined deeply enough in Stankov’s research. I’d love to see a factor analysis of policy-oriented beliefs meshed with a meta-analysis of several orders of cognitive complexity and personality constructs. For example, is there a correlation across the range of the former beliefs with binary attitudes? How does ideological certainty correlate with tendencies having to do with reducing complexity, anxiety, and dissonance? I don’t think Richwine read the paper though, because Stankov’s work is not primarily concerned with ’smarts’, and is, in fact, focused on a very complex meta-analysis, very close to my intuition about what I’d like to see.
In our work, conservatism is captured by a score — usually a factor score — obtained from several scales that were not developed specifically for the measurement of conservatism. Thus, it incorporates measures of Personality (Big Five from IPIP), Social Attitudes (Saucier, 2000; Stankov & Kneževi?, 2005), Values (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001), and Social Norms (GLOBE; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004) — a total of 43 different subscale scores.Nevertheless, ouranalyses show the presence of a factor of Conservatism that has loadings from subscales from all these domains and captures many constructs that are included in the nomological net of Jost et al. (2003) and Wilson (1973). This factor is expected to correlate with cognitive ability for reasons outlined above. What are the other factors that emerge from the analysis of 43 subscales? Are they also expected to correlate with cognitive ability? Stankov (2007) found three domain-related factors. They are quite different from the Conservatism factor in that they show very little overlap between the domains.
These are:
• Personality/Social Attitudes. This is usually a bipolar factor contrasting Personality traits on the negative side and Social Attitudes on the positive side. Loadings of Personality traits on this factor are typically lower than loadings from the Social Attitudes measures. In some of our analyses, this factor splits into a separate Personality factor representing “good” evaluative processes (or perhaps social desirability) and a Social Attitudes factor representing anti- or amoral attitudes towards social objects (Stankov & Kneževi?, 2005). • Values. See Method section for the interpretation of this factor.
• Social Norms. Several Social Norms scales from GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) load on this factor. In this paper I report the analyses based on a smaller (22) number of variables that correspond quite closely to the solution obtained with the full set of 43 measures. Smaller number of variables is employed in order to carry out simultaneous (i.e., multilevel) structural equation modelling of individual- and country-level data that has not been reported in the past.
There is no empirical evidence or theoretical arguments in the literature that suggest a relationship between cognitive ability and Values or Social Norms.2 Thus, it is reasonable to assume that these two constructs do not correlate with cognitive measures. The situation is different with the Personality/ Social Attitudes dimension. Jost (2006) reports that Conscientiousness (positively) and Openness to Experience (negatively) correlate with Democrat/Republican voting preferences of the states within the U.S., interpreted as reflections of liberal/conservative tendencies. Openness to Experience is also known to correlate about .30 with measures of intelligence (Stankov, 2005; Stankov and Lee, 2008). The other side of this bipolar factor, Social Attitudes, captured by Toughness, Maliciousness, and Betaism (i.e., non-PC motives for behavior), have qualities reminiscent of Dogmatism and Authoritarian personalities that are often seen as components of conservatism (see Jost et al., 2003). Since in our work they define a factor that is separate from conservatism, it is reasonable to assume that there is a separation between thuggish and rough Social Attitudes trait and Conservative syndrome that captures not only social attitudes but also Values, Social Norms, and Personality traits. These rough social attitudes are also likely to be related to cognitive ability—they often reflect difficulties or disinclination to make fine-grained analysis of a problematic situation (see Wilson, 1973).
Snap! Maybe the article was so complex it caused Richwine anxiety? I wonder what Glenn Beck would think?
Glenn Beck: “I really like our Constitution, I’d like to see it enacted. Let’s fix it and get back to where our founding fathers are.”
Loony, yet, “crazy ass sh*t, but. But, more than a few people do agree with Beck. This is so even if such people couldn’t tell you anything intelligent about what the founding fathers actually thought; what they contested among themselves; and what were their various radically liberal principles.
Here’s a conjecture (of mine) about ideology and history. There is no extant or past example of a form of governance for which it could be demonstrated that it’s procedures of governance wholly and absolutely are realized solely as a matter of adherence to ideological principles. This is falsifiable if it can be shown that there exists or has existed a form of governance for which, in its application of its principles, every instance was/is entirely consistent with principle.
Let’s imagine there are people who are committed to some set of principles in the following, narrow way:
Our endeavor is to instantiate a set of principles. We believe this for two reasons. First, because this set of principles is the best of all possible set of principles. Second, that the principles are best, is verified by the fact that their truth is the most reasonable truth upon which any possible set of principles could be based.
News for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & country. We seek to uphold the rights of citizens under the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, Republican principles / ideals, transparent & limited government, free markets, liberty & individual freedom. The ARRA News Service is an outreach of the Arkansas Republican Assembly. However, all content approval rests with the ARRA Editor. While numerous positions are reported, our beliefs & principles remain fixed.mission
Our political climate in the U.S. is very interesting in this year, unfolding now, after the election of Mr. Obama. Several developments have taken me by surprise. Obama surprised me by not partnering his financial system bailout policies with policies aimed to help right the economy of main street from the bottom up. It was also surprising that he didn’t articulate in concrete, instrumental, terms what kind of reform he would endorse, and insist upon, to end the depredations of the speculation-driven shadow economy.
Then, he moved to reform health care and laid it in the laps of his congressional majorities.
In light of these developments, I’m not in any way surprised that people have been stirred to reactionary and (called by me,) restorative activism. Nor was it surprising that they oriented their dissent positively around their patriotism, and, negatively, around their primal fear that the government is posed to strip from him or her so-called freedoms.
But the worst part? It allows the federal gov’t to be in charge of every aspect of your life. Every decision you make on a daily basis can be linked to “healthcare.” You drive an SUV? You’re contributing to pollution & that increases asthma…..you need to pay more! Since we have direct access to all of your accounts we know you own a 4-wheeler. That’s dangerous………you need to pay more! We see that you eat at McD’s twice a week. That’s bad for you……you need to pay more! YOU OWN A GUN??? THAT’S DANGEROUS! YOU NEED TO PAY ALOT MORE!!
These liberal fanatics will most DEFINITELY use the federal gov’ts financial stake in your everyday lifestyle choices to CONTROL THEM. Your decisions will no longer be your own, they will be decisions that will be for the “collective good.” And they will be MANDATED & CONTROLLED by the gov’t. And in order to “nudge” you into compliance with their ideology of how you should live your life, they will simply put a financial burden on you if you choose differently.
The paranoia surprised me. How does one square paranoia with a normative conservative ethos that holds its funding principles to be both first, and, last, and to be foundational, and also holds these principles are the only possible enlightened goal granted by reasoning through the problem of governance? Where does paranoia fit in? Is it possible that such foundational principles are, in fact, extremely fragile?
I don’t think so. President Obama has offered a mild liberalism. The bank bailout was extraordinary, yet a Republican would have had to have done the same thing. (Creative destruction is a notion one can practically hold only when the bombs aren’t falling on your own head.) All such bailouts tend to occupy uncertain spots in any ideology. A bailout is above all expedient and unhooked from conventional, ideological morality. They’re grotesque too.
So far Obama’s maneuvering hasn’t been much like anything we associate, historically, with truly radical presidents; especially those with very novel views of the Constitution—such as Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and Bush II. Nevertheless, the ideological principles survive, and this suggests underlying principles, aren’t at all fragile. This includes freedom given to be a result of, contingent upon, application of, ideological principles.
So why is paranoia evoked?
My tentative view is: affect is consequential in the current ’social psychological framed’ ecology. Forged in the magical bake shop of projective identification, specific affect-laden estimations are on offer. So: a messianic leader is scapegoated so as to be the cause of knowing (i.e. unconsciously feeling,) that what is possessed, “freedom,” is to be stolen by the conspiratorial Other, (i.e. an alter.) This inflated threat is to be met and defeated by, ironically enough, the collective personal power of freedom-loving individualists. It’s worth noting that in some quarters, this evil goat is assumed to have super powers, or, alternately, is assumed to be the servant of hidden masters.
Putting the participation mystique aside–may Levi-Strauss rest in peace–what are the embedded chain-of-being regimes supposed in a clash between the red-in-blood red-tending-to-blue meme, and, the blue-tending-to-orange meme. These, given by Grave’s Spiral Dynamics, and, given by me in my deployment of a shadow dynamics* supposing the red shadow of blue conservatism’s ‘traditionalistic’ paternal chain of being comes to clash with the neoliberal paternal chain-of-being of Orange. Pre-modern, the red shadow of blue, collides here with the post-modern orientation toward technocratic problem-solving.
(Or, the atavistic self and identity, is felt to be threatened by the spectral, post-modern selves and identities. Perhaps, were one to dig into the narratives, one would find at their core a clash between the production of certainty and productions of uncertainty.)
Among many curious aspects of this clash, is the gravity given to an emotionalized, largely unconscious, sense of freedom. (I’ve written about this before.) What is it about a notional freedom that one can be dispossessed of, versus, other less vulnerable notions about freedom? Isn’t it interesting that the conservative concept of freedom-under-constraint, a necessary consequence of the pessimistic view of human nature, is subsumed in the shuffle through the emotionally-charged libertarian bake shop!
Then there is the conspiratorial tenor of magical narratives. Of course, it’s long-standing that the government is anthropomorphized to be a kind of beast, capable of devouring freedom. In this respect the conspiracy mongering of Ron Paul, or Michelle Bachman, comes to be of a piece with the extreme supernaturalized conspiracy advocates, David Ickes, Alex Jones, and Michael Tsarion. In turn, the current extremes are merely the contemporary waves of olden conspiracy theories. And, heck, why not share some air time with the truly deluded?
“they’ve been positioning…” they, theY, thEY, THEY!
*I have yet to go into this in detail. However, roughly, my proposal is that the vertical scale of Spiral Dynamic is configurable as a dynamic, oppositional scale. This is able to depict how higher and lower memes serve as descriptive categories, and schema, for shadow dynamics. For example, by such a dynamic scale, the shadow dynamics for the Blue Meme are discoverable as aspects of Red (below) and Orange (above). In my novel (or idiosyncratic,) view, the shadow dynamics then tend to fall (or regress,) toward the lower, more archaic order, while this unconscious propensity is galvanized by fear of the upward pull toward the newer, more complex order.
My notion here supposes that a concept of Blue freedom, will come to be defended at the lower, unconscious level of Red. Similarly, this defense is waged against a super-charged (by way of ’social cognitized’ projection,) ‘controlling’ Orange. Grant this phenomenology, and the result is that fear of bureaucracy regresses to fear of collective control, control formulated to the scale conspiracy; “conspiracy” being the shadow concretization of Orange—in its worst form.
This is consistent—well, at least it is to me—with the mental procedures via which contested, soft conceptions–such as freedom–are reduced, reified and objectified. Then the reified conception’s opposite, in this case anti-freedom, is realized and nailed to the alter. Thus, a collective complex is constellated.
Toward the end of 2005, Cassano promoted Al Frost, then went looking for someone to replace him as the ambassador to Wall Street’s subprime-mortgage-bond desks. As a smart quant who understood abstruse securities, Gene Park was a likely candidate. That’s when Park decided to examine more closely the loans that A.I.G. F.P. had insured. He suspected Joe Cassano didn’t understand what he had done, but even so Park was shocked by the magnitude of the misunderstanding: these piles of consumer loans were now 95 percent U.S. subprime mortgages. Park then conducted a little survey, asking the people around A.I.G. F.P. most directly involved in insuring them how much subprime was in them. He asked Gary Gorton, a Yale professor who had helped build the model Cassano used to price the credit-default swaps. Gorton guessed that the piles were no more than 10 percent subprime. He asked a risk analyst in London, who guessed 20 percent. He asked Al Frost, who had no clue, but then, his job was to sell, not to trade. “None of them knew,” says one trader. Which sounds, in retrospect, incredible. But an entire financial system was premised on their not knowing—and paying them for their talent!
By the time Joe Cassano invited Gene Park to London for the meeting in which he would be “promoted” to the job of creating even more of these ticking time bombs, Park knew he wanted no part of it. He announced that, if he was made to take the job, he’d quit. (Had he taken it he would now be a magazine cover.)
Excellent article about the “delusion chamber” at A.I.G.
After tens of hours of research, and, especially in the academic economics journals now publishing research about the financial implosion, I’m beginning to get a purchase on what transpired.(And, to wrap your head around the structure of the financial crisis, is to comprehend how, in effect, a mountain of money could be conjured out of nothing.) It’s very complicated, but, where I end up is not complicated: like it was at Enron, the idea was to make as much money as one could and to do so without any thought about any consequence except for the consequence of riches.
Nowadays, there’s a bit of a Faustian bargain at work in the recovery. And, personal responsibility seems to be something only the little people are required to embrace. Many of those responsible have demonstrated that there is, in fact, such a thing as a free lunch. I predict our society will be soon again afflicted with another round of ’shadow economy’ once the masculine players regain their potency.
The gambling—with other peoples’ money—seems to take place on its own weird planet. I don’t imagine for a minute that there’s some underlying set of moral principles that is common to the gamblers.What can you say about someone whose reputation for daring and acumen has been erased by their own hubris and stupidity, yet, nevertheless, sit licking wounds with $100,000,000 in the bank?
GOP.com—”Not a web site but a platform!” said Michael ‘How did I get this job?’ Steele. Well, head on over! It seems a no brainer in more ways than one to go check out the new citadel of conservatism, GOP.COM.
In an earlier post, C.I.N.O., I had reason to post Russell Kirk’s 10 Principles of Conservatism. For comparison purposes, here’s the link to the source. Ahhh, comparison to what you mutter. How about the principles Republicans believe in, live by?
(1) We’re fortunate to live in America
(2) The Republican Party believes that the United States has been blessed with a unique set of individual rights and freedoms available to all.
(3) You can be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.
(4) The Republican Party is inspired by the power and ingenuity of the individual to succeed through hard work, family support and self-discipline. Helping those around you is worthwhile
(5) The Republican Party believes in the value of voluntary giving and community support over taxation and forced redistribution.
Small government is a better government for the people
(6) The Republican Party, like our nation’s founders, believes that government must be limited so that it never becomes powerful enough to infringe on the rights of individuals. You know what to do with your money better than government.
(7) The Republican Party supports low taxes because individuals know best how to make their own economic and charitable choices.
Free markets keep people free.
(8) The Republican Party is supportive of logical business regulations that encourage entrepeneurs to start more businesses so more individuals can enjoy the satisfaction and fruits of self-made success.
(9) Our Armed Forces defend and protect our democracy
(10) The Republican Party is committed to preserving our national strength while working to extend peace, freedom and human rights throughout the world.
(11) The Republican Party is guided by these principles as it develops solutions to the challenges facing America.
These principles, vis a vis conservatism, are mostly puerile, in comparison to the mature articulation provided by the example of Mr. Kirk. There seem to be omissions, since there’s no talk of the founders, or about Judeo-Christian values, of abortion.
I note this and think to myself how it is often presumed by conservatives of a certain didactic bent that if a person can deploy sound rationality to the problem of governance, the person will inexorably be led by the power of reason to ‘conservative’ principles. However, I don’t see how this same procedure could lead to these particular principles.
For example, one can experience the problem in any attempt to reason through how it could be that conservatism is the natural result of deeply apprehending the ethic and philosophy of all those Christ-centered, tradition-embracing, founding fathers. After all, such a working-through is only made problematic by the bald fact of those same founders—for the most part—not being conservative, and, being instead, revolutionaries. Heck, some were Unitarians!
To travel through GOP.com was for me split between the feel of being a tourist in a strange land, and, being nominated to be a member of one of the oddest focus groups imaginable. The most startling pitch found there is directed at bringing African-Americans back into the folds of their ‘natural home,’ the party of Lincoln.
On the Republican Heroes pages, 18 such ‘American Heroes-Patriots’ are highlighted. They are:
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Pinchney Pinchblack (1837-1921)
Jose Celso Barbosa (1857-1921)
Clara Barton (1821-1912)
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
Joseph Rainey (1832-1887)
Octavius Catto (1839-1871)
Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)
Hiram Revels (1827-1901)
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Edward Brooke (1919- )
Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Everett Dirkson (1896-1969)
Frank Johnson (1918-1999)
Mary Terrell (1863-1954)
John Langston (1829-1897)
Ellen Foster (? – ?)
Six white guys. Four patriots born in the 20th century. No Jesse Owens! It’s hard to figure out what the criteria was, EXCEPT, the obvious and cynical criteria hitched to the GOP being the party of Lincoln—who freed the slaves—jumps out. Factoid: John F. Kennedy won 60% of the black vote in 1960; Truman 67% in 1948; Obama 96% in 2008. (See also Nancy Weiss, Farewell to the party of Lincoln: Black politics in the age of FDR, for the relevant earlier history.
Republican thought leaders have offered a variety of crude explanations of why African-Americans vote Democratic, even though the Democratic Party was the home of most white racists for almost a century after the civil war. These explanations echo the ur-standard supposition: that if only one has the chops to think it through, one would embrace the natural ‘rightness’ of the Republican cum conservative creed.
Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats.”
Let’s be good empiricists and wonder about what would be the result were we to investigate the quantification of poverty rates among African-Americans over the various Democratic and GOP administrations, starting from the post-war era. What do you guess you would find? Do you imagine increases in black poverty tracks more closely to Democrats being in power, or more closely to business cycles? How; what, do business cycles track?
Here’s Rice, again, writing in February, on the web site of the National Black Republican Association:
The euphoria over the election of Michael Steele as the head of the GOP came from the fact that he was elected as chairman of the Republican Party because of the content of his character, not the color of his skin.
His historic election makes him the rightful inheritor of the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party’s first president, and the realization of the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican and our nation’s most revered civil rights leader.
It is only fitting that Steele’s election as the head of the Republican Party took place during the bicentennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln and the year of the assumption of power by President Barack Hussein Obama, a black liberal Democrat who falsely portends to be the inheritor of Lincoln’s Legacy and the realization of Dr. King’s Dream.
For the first time in the history of our Republic — since our founders established this nation on Judeo-Christian values anchored on a fundamental truth that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — the fate of our nation rests in the hands of two black men.
We are in a battle for the soul of America. Which black leader will determine the future of America? Will we follow Obama and the Democratic Party down the path of failed socialist policies that promote urban decay and generational poverty, or will we heed the call of Steele and the Republican Party to continue embracing our traditional values that have made this country great? The choice is ours.
Will we choose freedom or Uncle Sam’s Plantation?
I think it fair enough to use Rice’s wingnutty ideation as context for GOP.com’s cynical and hopeless appeal to African-American voters. The point is: the confabulation of this alternative history is not in the slightest manner reasonable, or conservative; nor does it correspond to the actual voting record and policy commitments of the Republican Party after 1964. It would take a sea-change in the GOP to re-associate itself with the ethos and radical figure of Abraham Lincoln.
Ironically, the Republican attempt to re-associate the Democrats with their past also wishes to co-opt the radical liberal principle that ‘all men are created equal.’ That this comes during an era when the Republican Party has boiled itself away to the dregs of white privilege makes the alternative universe of GOP.com a place where such hideous and cynical appeals are framed to be de rigueur.
