Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Response

I wrote this short little piece for In These Times about the difference between the right and left blogosphere. It is a very superficial sketch of how the two spheres operate differently. It evoked the expected furious response from the usual suspects because I quoted from Garance Franke-Ruta’s investigative piece on the right wing blogosphere.

The first thing that seems to bother people is my description of what I believe to be the main difference between the right and the left blogospheres — which is that the right is a fully engaged part of the Republican party infrastructure while the left is a unique political constituency. But, except for the fact that Republicans are indulging in dirty tricks like the Thune bloggers (and it looks like others coming down the pike) I’m not really making a value judgment about those differences. Indeed, I have my doubts about both systems and wonder if the Democrats wouldn’t benefit from a bit more message discipline.

Be that as it may, let me answer some of Mike Krempasky’s specific criticisms. First he comments that I have the FEC controversy completely bass ackwards when I say this:

Because of these successes, some progressives believed that the recent efforts by Republican members of the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) to regulate blogs as paid political speech may have been motivated by partisanship. As it turns out, the new proposed FEC rule changes, still subject to public comment, continue to exempt blogs from regulation.

With all of the potential for fundraising, “guerilla activism” and massaging, perhaps neither party wants to unduly inhibit their sector of the blogosphere.

First of all, I was incorrect in my characterization that Republicans wanted to regulate blogs, (although not wrong in stating that liberal bloggers believed that.) What Republicans wanted to do was give the impression that they had to regulate blogs. It is a small but important distinction and I should have been more precise. However, I stand by my assertion that this entire controversy was perceived to have been a partisan move and indeed, I think it was. The Republican commissioners who were so verklempt about the Democrats’ failure to appeal the decision are the same Republicans who want to take another bite out of McCain Feingold and this was an opportunity to do that.

The whole thing began with this interview with Republican commissioner Bradley Smith on C-Net called “The Coming Crackdown on Blogging”. He claimed that because the Democrats on the panel refused to appeal a judicial ruling that said that the internet had to be addressed under McCain Feingold, the sky was falling. It was a hysterical and overblown interview coming from a guy who does not believe in the FEC to begin with. Via Waldo-Jacquith here’s this about our intrepid blogging advocate, commissioner Bradley Smith:

Brad Smith, a law professor at Capital University Law School, has devoted his career to denouncing the FEC and the laws it is entrusted to enforce in precisely those strident terms. He believes that virtually the entire body of the nation’s campaign finance law is fundamentally flawed and unworkable “indeed, unconstitutional.” He has forcefully advocated deregulation of the system. And, if the James Watt of campaign finance had his way, the FEC, and its state counterparts, would do little more than serve as a file drawer for disclosure reports.

These are not stray and ill-considered comments. Rather, Brad Smith has become the single most aggressive advocate for deregulation of campaign finance in the academy today. Ask any scholar of campaign finance who has spilt the most ink denouncing our current campaign finance laws; the answer will be Brad Smith. Ask any enemy of campaign finance laws to identify the most sought-after witness to make the case to Congress; Brad Smith, will be the top answer.

Now, I have no idea if Bradley Smith truly believes that blogs have an absolute right to free speech. I give him the benefit of the doubt and say he probably does. However, it seems pretty clear to me that his zeal to appeal that lower court’s ruling was primarily because he wants to whittle away at McCain-Feingold if he can. There was no reason to assume that you couldn’t get where he wanted to go through new regulations or legislation that clarifies the issue.

As for whether the new proposed rules, which are still in the comment stage, specifically exempt blogs, well, I’ll leave that to the lawyers. But at the time I wrote this article, the press certainly seemed to think that the proposed rules exempted bloggers. Certain well known right wing blogs also indicated that the situation was not dire.

The Democracy Project wrote this headline:

FEC Draft Rule Looks Good for [Non Corporate] Bloggers

Wizbang wrote:

Today the members of The Online Coalition received the FEC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [PDF – Word], which we’re still looking through. The mood is cautiously optimistic.

Election law expert Richard Hazen said:

At first glance, the Federal Election Commission’s draft proposal for regulating Internet-based election activity is good news for the blogosphere.

Professor Bainbridge praised Hazen’s analysis.

Eugene Volokh had said earlier:

It would be good to clarify FECA to make clear that Weblogs and online magazines are exempted. But I think that, properly — even literally — interpreted, “other periodical publication” already includes blogs (except perhaps ones that publish intermittently and very rarely).

Pardon me for concluding that the proposed rules were not, in fact, going to end blogging as we know it.

To Mike Krempansky, however, they apparently are. And he seems to be making progress in creating an ongoing furor, based partially on a leaked early draft (to him, conveniently)of the proposed rules which are supposed to show the draconian Democratic attempt to have government shut down free speech on the internet. Luckily, the blogging masses, with a heads up from Bradley Smith, came to the rescue of America once again and saved the day. God bless bloggers.

“We are not the speech police,” said FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat. “The FEC does not tell private citizens what they can or can’t say on the Internet or elsewhere.” FEC Commissioner Danny McDonald, another Democrat, said: “I’ve never seen so much ado about nothing at this stage of the process.”

Among bloggers and political commentators, the reaction to the FEC’s proposed regulations … was mixed. Mike Krempasky, a contributor to conservative Web site RedState.org who attended the meeting, said: “Don’t believe Ellen Weintraub when she repeats her mantra of ‘Bloggers, chill out!'” Krempasky said the draft rules, if finalized, would create a “regulatory minefield” because they give individuals greater leeway than corporations.

I do not quarrel with the fact that there exists a regulatory minefield — a topic which could not possibly be dealt with in a short 700 word essay. But it is clear that the intent was that the average blogger be exempted from the proposed regulations.

For the record, I’m not in favor of regulating speech on the internet in any way. I’m a free speech absolutist. But I also see the brave new world of right wing “guerilla internet activism” as a very handy way to conduct their patented dirty tricks and funnel big corporate and individual money into campaigns, thus thwarting the McCain Feingold rules. But, it was ever thus. Money is like water in politics. It will always find a way in. The internet is too unknown and growing in too many different directions to know as yet whether it will corrupt the political system more than it enhances it. I say leave it alone and if that means that congress should write a law specifically exempting it, then I’m for it.

As for throwing my lot in with Mike Krempasky, however, I think not. I believe that he is sincere in his work on this issue, but he is a right wing political operative trained by slime-meister Morton Blackwell. He’s not just another libertarian, open source internet kinda guy. Somehow, I don’t think he has my best interest at heart. Caveat emptor, bloggers.

Oh, and as far as Krempasky’s little fit of the giggles that I said Morton Blackwell is finding the blogosphere “useful” I can only link to this web page from Blackwell’s “Leadership Institute” that advertises its “Internet Activist School.”

Apparently, Krempasky teaches some of these classes:

For example, Krempasky told “a conservative firefighter” that he should write about firefighting because that would be of interest to readers. Using that angle, he could build an audience. And if push ever came to shove, he could respond to an online dogfight from the unassailable position of being a firefighter — and not as just another conservative ideologue. Krempasky then offered to help all the attendees set up their own blogs.

Call me crazy, but that seems like something that would be “useful” to the Republican Party, which Morton Blackwell has devoted his life and career to advancing. I never said he was a blogger. But he sure as hell is a legendary political operative and I have little doubt that his Leadership Institute is quite “useful” to the cause in many ways.

Again, I am not agitating against all this. But the thrust of my piece was simply that there is nothing like this on the left. There are no operatives running “blog schools” to teach people how to be activists. There is no rich partisan left wing media infrastructure that can pay for bloggers to write books and hit the lecture circuit and live off of nice sincures at think tanks.

Commenters at ITT claimed that Kos and Atrios fit that category, but that is patently not true. Their blog activism long preceded any involvement with the party and their clout today stems from their massive readership and ability to deliver money and votes to the party. They are the leaders of a constituency that operates as a pressure group and a grassroots organizing operation. None of them worked as political operatives before they became bloggers. The blogging came first.

There are some like Yglesias, Drum and others who also write for liberal magazines. But none of them can be guaranteed a book deal or a radio show or a fellowship to support them, because no network exists that trains and supports lefty writers, thinkers and public relations specialists in Democratic politics. It just isn’t there.

But hey, I never said we shouldn’t have such a thing or that it was wrong to do it. Indeed, I think we should. But that does not change the fact that we don’t have it yet. (I do draw the line at dirty tricks schools, though. Not a good way to go.)

I hope, however, that the leftwing netroots maintain their activist independence to at least some extent. It’s a valuable source of energy, new ideas and organization. As we are out of power and fighting for our political lives, keeping close contact with the people, even if the netroots are representative of only a small activist faction, is important.

I suspect the right would like to have some of that too which is why guys like Mike Krempasky are teaching conservatives how to be spontaneous grassroots activists. (Their people tend to respond best to direction from authority which is why the churches are so effective.) It’s going to take a little bit more work for them to create a vital netroots. But they will probably do it. They take this stuff seriously. Luckily, we are beginning to do the same.

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The Limits Of Politics

For your daily pop culture diatribe, I cannot recommend this post by Matt Yglesias highly enough.

Any worldview that can’t stand up in the midst of a vibrant cultural ocean needs to rethink itself more than it needs to try and dragoon political forces into supporting it. I often feel that America’s religious traditionalists ought to engage in more self-congratulation. Despite — or, I would argue, because of — its inability to entrench itself as a European-style official religion, certain strains of American Protestantism have established themselves as far and away the most robust and viable religious force in the developed world. Traditionalists are perfectly capable of doing as I suggest — fighting the fight in the background society, contesting secular culture in the cultural domain. There’s all this stuff out there. Let it fight, let’s argue, write, sing, film, etc. But preserving that sort of vibrancy — the integrity, one might say, of America’s various communities — requires us not to subordinate the value of everything to the values of politics, and not to try and turn everything into the subject of collective political decision-making.

That’s it exactly. Politics can’t do everything. And everything isn’t politics. Democrats can offer real solutions to real people’s problems, but not all of them. We can help mitigate the risk of the free market and provide some protection from the more predatory aspects of capitalism. We can guarantee that every person be treated equally under the law and we can ensure our civil liberties. But politics cannot dictate culture and everytime it tries it creates far more problems than it solves. In fact, the liberal should be in favor of an unfettered market in one thing — ideas. It is only through that, that we can guarantee our freedom. Our Bill of Rights, properly protected, will do that. But, we have to protect it.

Bravo to Matt for finding the nub of this argument. Culture is a different sphere than politics and one that is just as essential, in its own right, to a free society as democracy is or freedom to practice religion. Politics is a very crude instrument to arbitrate something as delicate and ephemeral as ideas, art, love, personal meaning — the whole sphere of life that culture encompasses.

And yet there is a political danger lurking of which we should be aware. One of my many brilliant commenters in that fine thread below points this out:

Today in the US, all the bases are belonging to the radical right, except a few.

They’ve got the think-tanks, but they haven’t got academia.

They’ve got the executive and the legislative branches, but they haven’t got the judiciary.

They’ve got the MSM stitched up along with the commentariat. They haven’t got the entertainment industry quite where they’d like, though. Documentaries, in particular, can be a source of information and criticism that can cause a Rove or a Luntz to break a sweat.

Now look at all the “cultural” kerfuffles they’ve kicked up since the beginning of this year. American education is supposedly threatened by leftist professors, and conservatives are denied their rightful place on campus. New rules are needed to protect poor Young Republican students from their liberal professors, it seems. The Schiavo case shows that the judiciary needs kicking into shape (DeLay just said it again). The entertainment industry is putting out the Wrong Stuff, and what’s needed is censorship. (Hey, blogs too.)

So let’s go and pitch into the great “debate” about these subjects, and let’s not see that, in each case, the radical right is proposing to legislate and even strangle essential constitutional precepts like freedom of speech and the separation of powers. Let’s not notice that what they are trying to do is browbeat and bend to their will the last zones of influence in American life that are capable of being an obstacle in their path, and let’s forget that their path is toward a new form of totalitarianism harnessing religion as the Nazis harnessed nationalism.

We are definitely seeing a frontal assault on the remaining spheres of social influence that are not organized around or willingly complicit with the Republican agenda. This is not an accident. They, of course, see all obstacles as “liberal” which in the classical sense, I suppose they are. But these social influences of the judiciary, academia and popular culture are not explicitly partisan. In fact, they are largely independent spheres that resist co-option by partisan politics.

So, it’s not that liberals want to protect smut and Ward Churchill because we enjoy it or agree with it. And it’s not solely because we don’t trust that anybody could make decisions about such things that we could live with. It’s because we are trying to preserve a society in which culture and intellectual freedom can even continue to exist.

The assaults on culture, academia and the judiciary are not criticisms or even strident disagreements with their products or outcomes. These assaults are legal, legislative and regulatory attempts to pull these independent spheres under governmental authority.

It’s not our political agenda we’re protecting. Not should we allow ourselves to be conned into thinking that we are helping the working mom so it is a good thing anyway. The stakes are much higher than that even if people don’t choose to see it. We must ensure that our entire society, political, cultural and intellectual, isn’t subsumed by the Republican agenda. There’s a distinction there and a very important one. Without a vibrant culture, an independent judiciary and a free intellectial sphere that operates outside the political decision making process, we become, by default, totalitarian.

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Suicide Pact

I am edified to learn that Dr Bill Frist, cat slayer, and Dr James Dobson, dauchshund beater, are joining hands to kill the independent judiciary. (As I have said before, while it’s true that not all animal abusers become serial killers, it is true that the vast majority of serial killers were once animal abusers. Not that I’m saying that Frist and Dobson are serial killers … let’s just say that they are in some pretty disgusting company.)

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day “Justice Sunday” and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading “the filibuster against people of faith,” it reads: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”

The filibuster is being used against people of faith? Man, these wingnuts are feeling their oats.

Gawd I hope that the liberal media feel it is their duty to cover this telecast in great depth — to show that they are not hostile to religion, of course. This would be a wonderful way for them to prove once and for all that they are fair and balanced and believe that these religious issues should be well covered in the press. I think we need to write to all the networks and demand that they cover this important story. We need to tell them that the people have a right to hear what their leaders are saying.

I cannot stress enough how important I think it is to draw the contrasts between the Democrats and Republicans right now. Their ducky president looks lamer and lamer by the day and both GOP leaders of the congress are overreaching badly with this public soul kissing of the extremist religious right. (Giving them any cover for this wacky morals crusade is just dumb. Don’t go there, please.)

All we need to do is say we are defending the constitution. Most people may know nothing about civics in this country anymore, but they know damned well that disembowling one branch of government is not business as usual. This is a case where the Republicans have not done the spadework and spent years preparing the public with relentless soothing rhetoric meant to give the impression that this is a natural and inevitable political evolution that will disrupt nothing. Instead their rhetoric is uncharacteristically shrill and nervous. They are lurching around now, reacting to their riled up constituency and making mistakes.

They are leading the Senate to a big dramatic showdown and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But we should not flinch. They are the ones in the spotlight, they are the ones who look hysterical, they are the ones who have the stink of desperation all over them, not us. Tone will be important, here. We should make sure that in the debate we are defending the constitution and tradition and we should do it in modest language with common sense rhetoric. The media will cover this and it will be a perfect chance for us to persuade the public through our temperate but unyielding approach that we are operating from principle and committment. The other side is going to work itself into a frenzy. We need to be calm and cool and united.

The media will trivialize the Democrats’ position but we have to remember that this is also the kind of conflict they love so they’ll cover it and give Democrats some time to make their case. We should be preparing right now for that opportunity with a set of strong and persuasive talking points that we stick with throughout the controversy. According to this widely reported recent WSJ poll, people are already nervous. They want the Democrats to act as a backstop for this wild nonsense. And that was before Schiavo. We should be prepared to say over and over again that we feel it is our duty to prevent the Republicans from radically altering our way of governance. Do you suppose that most people agree with this?:

I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.

That’s the most powerful man in the US House of Representatives saying that, not some no-name preacher from Arkansas.

Luckily it seems the Harry Reid has the smarts and the cojones to realize that this is as much a defining issue for us as is social security and he’s not going to flinch:

Alexander said Democrats “are badly misreading this politically” if they think the public would blame Republicans for a Senate breakdown orchestrated by Democrats. GOP aides say Frist has drawn the same conclusion. Nonetheless, Senate Democrats are vowing a scorched-earth response, noting that a single senator can dramatically slow down the chamber’s work by insisting on time-consuming procedures that are normally bypassed by “unanimous consent.”

They also are portraying Frist as a tool of GOP extremists. Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), asked this week if the radical right is driving Frist and his lieutenants, replied: “If they decide to do this, which it appears they are going to, the answer is unequivocally — underlined, underscored — yes.”

Frist’s political instincts are not very good as he has proven over and over again and it seems to have precipitated this showdown too:

“I think Senator Frist has backed himself into a corner where I don’t see how he can avoid pulling the nuclear trigger,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In terms of a presidential race, Cook said, “it hurts if he doesn’t come up with the votes. But it also hurts him if the Senate comes to a grinding halt and can’t get anything done. I think the guy’s in a real jam.”

I think Reid has the argument here and I think we will prevail. Just as newt failed to realize that it was his intemperate over-the-top rhetoric during the government shutdown that turned the people against him, these guys don’t understand that allying themselves with the most extremist wing of the religious right is bound to do the same thing. Bubbles breed hubris and I think these people spend way too much time talking to each other.

Update: Does anyone out there know of any examples of moderate Republican religious types who have publicly come out against these recent extremist moves? I know that the polls indicate that a large number of them disagreed with the Schiavo matter, but I’m not aware of any of the people for whom morals are a voting issue moving away from the GOP because of it. Where I’m seeing the movement is in the libertarian, scientific and professional factions of the party.

For instance, I have not seen any full throated repudiations of the GOP by Republican religious moderates such as this from Bush voter, John Cole. My hunch is that people who vote on “morals” issues aren’t actually moderates so they aren’t disturbed in the least by what they are seeing. Therefore, posturing about the issue won’t get us anywhere. But, who knows? It sure seems to me that the way to win is to go where the votes are up for grabs — which seems to me to be among the people who really don’t want James Dobson and Pat Robertson running the country.

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Sissy Assassins

I’m awfully touched that so many Republicans have gone all Claud Raines over these mean Tom Delay and George Bush t-shirts. Indeed, they are so shocked and appalled that according to Crooks and Liars, they are even issuing death threats to Cafe Press, the outfit that distributes the offending items.

The liberal left is completely out of hand. (Michelle Malkin calls us the “pro-assassination” left which is something I’m hearing more of lately and wonder just when this latest delusion seized the wingnuts and what it means. Usually this sort of thing is projection which is a bit alarming.) In any case it appears that we liberals are now not only a bunch of sissies, we are also ruthless killers. Which is interesting, if incoherent.

For instance, it must be liberals who are selling the “Deep Six” campaign through cafe press, which consists of headstones with the names and pictures of Democratic Senators.

You can even get a tee shirt for your baby with that nice picture on it.

And this classic from the right wing shopmetrospy.com never gets old. The price has been discounted so stock up for gifts!:

It’s interesting that when I first posted this back in November during the earlier “Che” t-shirt vapors, the caption said:

The Marine who killed the wounded insurgent in Fallujah deserves our praise and admiration. In a split second decision, he acted valiantly.

On the otherhand, Kevin Sites of NBC is a traitor. Beheading civilians, booby-trapped bodies, suicide bombers?? Sorry hippie, American lives come first. Terrorists don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. This Marine deserves a medal and Kevin Sites, you deserve a punch in the mouth.

Now it’s toned down just a little bit.

But I think what really makes the point most clearly about the liberal penchant for violence, crudity and coarseness is this one, entitled “Irrigate Hillary” which shows a soldier urinating into Mrs. Clinton’s mouth:

(Click on the link for the full panoply of just one guy’s hate Hillary items available through cafe press. Sadly, the “Irrigate Hillary” campaign doesn’t offer an apron or a baby shirt. Luckily, it does come on a coffee cup. Which is presumably empty.)

It’s sad that we liberals, with our penchant for assasination and disgusting crudity, have lowered the discourse to such a degree that even Tom DeLay is being villified with mean t-shirts. But we may have gone too far this time. Republicans have stepped up and put liberals on notice that they will no longer tolerate our reprehensible rhetoric. Children are listening … and wearing the t-shirts.

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Believe It

This whole argument about pop culture reminds me of a conversation I had in 1977. I was sitting around with my friends and somebody put “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols on the stereo. Afterwards, I said I thought it wasn’t really music — to which a friend of mine replied that I sounded just like his parents when he first played the Beatles. I was only 21 at the time, so this hit me pretty hard. I never forgot it.

This “kids today” stuff has been going on for a long, long time. Anybody who was a kid in the 60’s like I was, remembers endless sermons and lectures and handwringing about how the world was coming to an end because the boys were growing their hair long and the girls weren’t shaving their armpits and marijuana was going to fry your brain like an egg. Before that, in 1956, there was the fear of “juvenile delinquents”:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;
We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get.
We ain’t no delinquents,
We’re misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won’t give me a puff.
They didn’t wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin’ lizards! That’s why I’m so bad!

Officer Krupke, you’re really a square;
This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care!
It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He’s psychologic’ly disturbed!

My father is a bastard,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!

Officer Krupke, you’re really a slob.
This boy don’t need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society’s played him a terrible trick,
And sociologic’ly he’s sick!

Gee, Officer Krupke,
We’re down on our knees,
‘Cause no one wants a fellow with a social disease.
Gee, Officer Krupke,
What are we to do?
Gee, Officer Krupke,
Krup you!

And that was in the golden age of “Leave It To Beaver” and “I Love Lucy.”

All these people who are so afraid of what their kids are doing and thinking are just like my parents were. Afraid of the new world they’d built and were leaving behind for their kids. And so it goes.

Ed Kilgore writes today on the subject:

If there’s a problem, and at least some sorts of tangible public-policy solutions, then the argument that this is “all about politics” loses some of its sting. But of course, you “can’t take the politics out of politics,” so yeah, Democrats should look at this politically as well. And Amy is absolutely right that Democrats tend to view “cultural issues” as limited to abortion and gay marriage and other Republican-dictated agenda items, and Gerstein is absolutely right that such issues are often just the ways voters use to figure out whether politicians actually believe (a) there are principles more important than politics, and (b) there is such a thing as right and wrong.

The whole hep Democratic world right now, from Howard Dean to George Lackoff to Bill Bradley right over to the DLC, says it’s important that Democrats clearly identify “what they believe” and “where they stand” and “what values they cherish.” If all the evidence–some scientific, some anecdotal or intuitive–suggesting that parents believe they are fighting an unequal battle with powerful cultural forces over the upbringing of their children is at all correct, then we have to take a stand there, too. It may matter a whole lot, if you look at the Democratic vote among marrieds-with-children–steadily dropping from a Clinton win in 1996 to an eighteen-point loss in 2004, a disproportionately large swing

Yes, the public does wonder what we stand for. And in this debate it seems we can either stand for better V chips and Terri Schiavo’s mother-in-law, or we can stand for this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like it actually means something. Even has a bit of a ring to it.

Look, I don’t care if we legislate for “better” V-chips. (From what I have read people aren’t using the one we have available, not because it’s too hard, but because they just don’t want to be bothered. But whatever.) We can express our empathy for how difficult it is to parent in this environment. We can bemoan the coarsening of the culture and try shame people to stop selling useless consumer items to children. None of those things are particularly dangerous in themselves. But neither are they going to be politically advantageous.

Everytime we try to move in this “moderate” cultural direction that we think people will choose over the GOP vision, the more we appear to be a large puddle of lukewarm water. Because, let’s face it. If you really think that the government should do something about popular culture because it’s harmful then you really should step up to the plate and admit that you think censorship in some form or another would be a good thing. Because that’s the only thing that government can really do to make a difference — compel people to stop saying and selling and watching and buying.

And that’s what the conservatives have to offer. Clear, simple, straightforward. They believe that this swill is harming society and they want it taken care of. They don’t play around with studies and “oh I understand what you are going through.” They offer a real solution. Censor the garbage. Impeach the judges. Fix the damn problem. The bully in their pulpit sounds a hell of a lot more competent than ours.

And, conversely, they have won the gun issue by being rigid absolutists about the second amendment and giving no quarter. In fact, I think that their rhetoric has been so widespread and so successful that we would benefit from making our argument explicitly about the first amendment in much the same way. Some people may just wonder why, if the second is sacred, the first shouldn’t be also.

Now, I don’t think that any Democrats really want censorship. They want magic. They want people to stop wanting what they want. And if that doesn’t work, they want the manufacturers and producers to feel bad about what they are doing and stop providing what the people want. This is an unrealistic political goal. (It seems much more suited to religion than government and it makes me wonder, if religion is sweeping the nation in a new Great Awakening, why it is having so little effect?)

And there is the truly serious problem that these culture war issues are exploited by the right for the very reason that they are willing to offer these simple solutions to issues that we necessarily find complicated. They tie us in knots with this stuff. That’s why we shouldn’t walk into their trap time after time after time by trying to split the difference. It isn’t working.

Kilgore says:

Gerstein is absolutely right that such issues are often just the ways voters use to figure out whether politicians actually believe (a) there are principles more important than politics, and (b) there is such a thing as right and wrong.

Why do we have to play the game on their “culture war” turf? Why can’t we say that the principle of free speech is more important than politics (which I actually believe has the virtue of being true.) Why can’t we say that it is wrong for people to impose their religious views on others? Are these not principles worth fighting for? Do they not have the ring of clear common sense? These seem like first principles to me.

Why people continue to believe that we can convince people that we “believe in something” by validating the GOP’s calumnious rhetoric about deviant liberal culture I will never understand. I think we convince people that we believe in something by well … believing in something. How about the constitution, for a starter?

Update: Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes a number of exceptional insights into this issue (read the whole post) but I think this one is particularly apt:

There’s an additional problem evident in the way Sullivan frames the debate. One might ask why so many people are obsessed with culture, when the evidence for the influences attributed to it are so weak. Could it be that politicians and pundits like Sullivan continually tell parents that they should be obsessed with culture? This isn’t just harmless misdirection, either. The national political agenda can only be focused on a fraction of the policy solutions being advocated. The more people are convinced that TV is causing certain social pathologies, the less likely they are to agitate for solutions that might actually be relevant to the problem (which, of course, is why the cultural conservative agenda is so effective for Republicans.) I would like liberals to point out that other liberal democracies have lower rates of violence and teen pregnancy despite their children being exposed to similar cultural influences, which suggests that other factors may be more relevant that pop culture. But according to Sullivan, you’re not even allowed to point this out, because if parents believe what politicians tell them you’re not allowed to say anything different.

It’s the old Cokie Roberts line “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’s out there.”

And frankly, I’m not ever sure it is. Is there any hard data, other than the fact that married women are voting more Republican, that this culture clash is a voting issue? And even if it is, I think Lemiuex’s observation is likely correct. Republicans are laughing themselves silly everytime we validate their winning misdirection strategy.

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Comment of the week

On the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy:

An open Letter to David Horowitz:

April 13, 2005
Dear Mr. Horowitz:

I see that your list is a tad short of 1000 so I would like to nominate myself for inclusion. You probably have never heard of me (unless you followed the Boston Symphony where I played for 27 years). I feel my political mojo has faded with my aging and I fear encroaching irrelevance (remember the good old days!) so I’m hoping you will help me out, since I can claim many points of contact, some of them admittedly rather casual, with people on your list, to wit:

I went to a summer music camp with Carol Gilligan (she was Carol Friedman then) and have remained in contact with her ever since. Another fairly regular presence at this camp was Pete Seeger, which should tell you all you need to know. Some years later, I taught at the place and in varying years had in my choruses both Arlo Guthrie (who really belongs in your list) and Frank Rich, although he was only thirteen at the time.

I lived in New York City in 1968 and became acquainted with Harold Ickes Jr. when he was a boy genius and I was a foot-soldier in the Eugene McCarthy campaign. Dennis Kucunich is my mother’s Congressman, and my brother who lives in Seattle is a supporter of Patty Murray. I even had an uncle named Joe Miller, although he is not the same as your guy. Still….

I once hoisted beers with Norman Mailer, although I’m sure he doesn’t remember me (or anything else from that evening in the Lion’s Head Tavern). I met Abbie Hoffman (also not on your list, strangely…he is as dead as Paul Robeson and a lot hipper) at a party while he was under indictment and encountered Alexander Cockburn —also in the Lion’s Head –but I must admit that I didn’t like him very much. I shook hands with Muhammed Ali and was really excited. For a year in Cambridge I lived down the street from Bonny Raitt, and even performed on the same stage with her when she was a guest with the Boston Pops.

Although I agree with very little of what I says, I did teach for a while at Boston University at the same time that Howard Zinn was there. My son was once an intern in John Kerry’s Washington office and went to George Soros’ Central European University in Budapest for two years (although since he is now a corporate lawyer maybe this doesn’t count) and his wonderful wife worked for the Ford Foundation.

Lest you think I have slacked off, presently Michael Capuano is my Congressman and I actually live in Somerville, his birthplace. I admit it’s a bit of a stretch but it should count for something, and my poetry professor of last year married her same-sex partner. I’d guess that she would be thrilled to be included too.

Now since I don’t have a blog or an op-ed column, you may me dismiss me as a wannabe. But I hope you’ll consider that carefully, since I’m capable of the following sort of thing (and I’m really proud of it…four technically sound limericks on the same subject — you — is not at all easy to bring off)

David Horowitz

This Horowitz is a phenom
Who once railed against Vietnam
He fought his good fight
On the left not the right
O’er the Ramparts red glare with aplomb.

But things on the left were not jake
He skedaddled, a Long March did make
As Far Left as he’d been
He repented his sin
Went Far Right, made the same old mistake.

Though he moved to the opposite wing
And neocon hymns he may sing,
As he once lauded Mao
He’s right radical now
Not position, but style is the thing.

For the style of his dogmatic way
(I don’t doubt that it really does pay)
Is with passion extreme
To declaim, rant and scream
His great Absolute Truth (of today).

I would be happy to supply you with a bio if you would honor me with inclusion in your little list. I am yours truly

Jerome P. Rosen

PS I think John Bolton is an asshole, that Cheney and Richard Perle are evil, and that you are a nut-job. Does this help?

Smear Boats Are A Comin’

If anyone is wondering about this Hillary swift boat style smear book that Drudge is flacking on his site, be advised that the alleged liberal who wrote it is actually the right wing fuck who writes Walter Scott’s Personality Parade — a piece of Sunday morning trash I stopped reading when he wrote that Chelsea Clinton was an “apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree” drunken party girl.

Apparently, Pengiun has joined the Regnery ranks. Nice.

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Light Of Reason

Arthur Silber wades into the now legendary Horowitz Bérubé smackdown (which if you haven’t read it is one of the most satisfying series of blog posts in blogdom) with characteristically interesting insights:

Given the statement in his own “Academic Bill of Rights,” on what grounds can Horowitz possibly maintain these blatantly irreconcilable positions? Whenever he accuses anyone of “shar[ing] negative views of the Bush Administration” with known terrorists (or more briefly, of “hating America”), one can simply reply: “But, Mr. Horowitz, you yourself believe that ‘there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.’ So how do you know that anyone hates America, or that the invasion of Iraq was legitimate, or that occupying Iraq was a wise move in the war against terrorism? In fact, given your own statements, how do you know anything at all?”

Given Horowitz’s approach (which inevitably and necessarily combines relativism, skepticism and subjectivism in one particularly nasty mix), he would have no answer—and in fact, he doesn’t know anything, not with certainty, by his own admission.

I’ve been meaning to write a little post directing my lovely readers to Arthur Silber’s Light of Reason. His site is consistently interesting, well written and original. He’s a libertarian, but not one of those annoying fake libertarians who pretend that they are libertarians because they are too embarrassed to be called Republicans (which I understand, but disdain.)

Anyway, Arthur’s blog is one of the ways that we can keep some intellectual integrity in this fight with the crazed right wing. He makes arguments, he doesn’t hurl epithets. You might learn something even when you disagree with him, which you will, if your politics are like mine.

He’s a real humanoid who incidentally could use some financial help due to ill health. If you have it to spare, it would be a good place to do your good deed for the day.

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Exploding Bandwagon

Noam Scheiber, who I often endorse wholeheartedly on other issues, explicitly lays out the divide in the Democratic party as I did, as being between “social libertarians” and “communitarians” which is, in my opinion, a weasel word for “kinda socially conservative” in this context.

He says that Democrats began losing because they were perceived as being immoral and licentious, going all the way back to 1972’s “abortion, amnesty and acid.” It was, in his opinion, only when Bill Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” that we began to lose that perception. But we’ve been backsliding ever since. Indeed, according to him, every election we have lost or won in the last 30 years has been because we are either perceived as moral or immoral to the moderates who swing elections.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze the election statistics to prove whether or not that last is true, but I will say that while we are concerning ourselves with how we are perceived, let us not forget that we have also been perceived as weak on defense. Also the party of racial and gender preferences. And perhaps most importantly, we have been portrayed for decades as the party of big government, the “nanny state” who want to regulate and tax everyone out of existence and force you to hang around with people you hate, eat foods you don’t like and quit smoking and drinking even though you hurt nobody but yourself. That’s as much of a critique of “do-gooder” Democrats as it ever has been of “law and order” Republicans, who traditionally made their argument on the basis of rampant crime, not telling people what they should do for themselves.

It’s always something, isn’t it? Those republican scamps have a handy critique for everything we believe. So, I would imagine just as we become the “communitarian” party of love for the weak and defenseless, you’ll be seeing a spirited defense of individual liberty coming from the other side. It’s kind of the way these things work. Karl knows this.

The thing is that rarely have I seen in my lifetime a situation in which the Republicans have been so soundly criticized by even their own constituency for being too intrusive and imposing their own values on others as we saw in the Schiavo case. It would seem a natural that Democrats would, out of pragmatism if not principle, see this as a way to drive a wedge into the Republican coalition by capitalizing on public opinion and characterizing the Republicans as being in the grip of a mad faction that wants to impose its religious values on everyone.

Apparently not. Instead we are going to drive a wedge into our own, against the will of the majority of both Democrats and Republicans. It’s an unusual strategy to say the least. Now is our chance to expose their extremism and it looks like we may just punt. How depressing:

When the Schiavo case began garnering national attention, Democrats’ first reaction was to press their social libertarian line. “Congressional leaders have no business substituting their judgment for that of multiple state courts that have extensively considered the issues in this intensely personal family matter,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi complained. Liberals became increasingly confident as polls showed the public overwhelmingly concerned about federal intrusion into a private family matter. Once again, Democrats risked reinforcing the perception they lacked core values.

Something interesting, however, was beginning to happen: Voices within the Democratic Party were genuinely agonizing over whether congressional intervention in the Schiavo case was truly so egregious. Almost 50 House Democrats voted in favor of the legislation authorizing the additional judicial review–many of them Southern moderates, but several of them liberal members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It was dawning on the party that there was an affirmative statement of values to be made, not simply a libertarian attack on government intervention.

The case of Terri Schiavo is incredibly complex. But the question of a government obligation to the weak, the sick, and the disabled is not–at least for Democrats. So it was reassuring to learn this week that congressional Democrats like Tom Harkin and Barney Frank are closing ranks behind legislation that would allow federal courts to review cases in which end-of-life choices are murky and the family is divided. Considered alongside Hillary Clinton’s efforts to reframe the pro-choice position as a communitarian belief that every child should be born into a loving, caring family, it looks as though we’re seeing the beginning of a new Democratic Party. It’s a party that appeals to core values, not one that allows itself to be caricatured by their absence. Let’s hope that party is here to stay.

Yes, by all means, let’s adopt the biggest political cock-up the Republicans have made in the last twenty years as our own. (And anybody who thinks that we can stop the Republicans from caricaturing us is fooling themselves. The key is for us to caricature them — and they are making it easy for us to do it if we have the guts.)

I sincerely hope that we are not dumb enough to portray ourselves as the party of the do-gooder church lady just when they are in the process of proving to the entire country that they are the party of nosy mother-in-law. I do not believe that we will get one more vote for it in the south, and we will lose any hope of gaining back some of the western red states that might be persuaded that all this holy roller nonsense has gone too far.

This is terrible, terrible politics. I don’t mind Hillary emphasizing birth control and sex education as a way to expose the religious right’s real agenda. I think that makes sense. But that is far different than joining the most far right of the far right in allowing the federal courts to dabble in individual end of life issues. If we do this I hope we are also prepared to give the right its cover as they continue their assult on the allegedly runaway “activist” judiciary — because that’s the basis for this ridiculous federal power grab. There was no reason for the federal courts to get involved with Sciavo because the state courts did NOTHING wrong. My God. Are we really willing to go down this road?

I sincerely hope Scheiber is wrong on this because if he isn’t it means that we are thinking of jumping on the right’s exploding bandwagon just as it’s careening off the edge of a cliff. I can’t think of a more self-destructive act.

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Heartsease

Go read this beautiful meditation and eulogy from the fine writer Meteor Blades at The Next Hurrah.

And by the way, Hugh Hewitt can once again kiss my ass.

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