Discussions on climate change are at an impasse. Some of those who fret about man-made emissions of greenhouse gases claim it’s a threat that trumps all others, including terrorism. Others argue that we have more pressing concerns, such as the developing world’s dehumanizing poverty and disease.
So the people who dispute the science of Global Warming do so because they are concerned about the more pressing concerns of poverty and disease. Uh Huh. Of course, they have faith that if they just do exactly what they want, the magical market will solve everybody’s problems and we can all live happily ever after rolling around in our thousand dollar bills. Clap Your Hands!
At some level, science probably will never resolve what to do about global warming. Climate change is complex, with scores of variables and time-frame considerations of decades and even centuries. Both sides have substantial data that support their points of view. Both sides also believe that to the extent the science is “settled,” it’s settled in ways that undergird their respective policy prescriptions.
But science is inherently descriptive, not prescriptive. It can only inform us about the likely consequences of actions. It doesn’t tell us — and shouldn’t tell us — if those actions should be taken. That arena is reserved for politics, where moral judgments and philosophical views matter alongside scientific truth. Morality and philosophy are often best examined and illustrated not through scientific discourse but through narratives, theology and storytelling.
Jesus H. Christ. These guys are not only rejecting the Enlightenment, they are laying the groundwork to consciously bring about another dark ages.
I’m telling you, we need to be concerned that people who think like this are operating heavy machinery. Let’s examine the moral and philosophical dimensions of gravity, shall we? Or perhaps we should have some theologians weigh in on whether we should worry about bacteria.
There is, interestingly, one area in which they do not feel it necessary to discuss science in a philosophical, moral or, let’s face it, Biblical sense. In fact they prefer not to discuss it in public at all if possible:
If the Bush administration succeeds in its determined but little-noticed push to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, this sun-baked desert flatland 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas could once again reverberate with the ground-shaking thumps of nuclear explosions that used to be common here.
But “Icecap,” the test of a bomb 10 times the size of the one that devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, was halted when the first President Bush placed a moratorium on U.S. nuclear tests in October 1992. The voluntary test ban came two years after Russia stopped its nuclear tests.
[…]
Last year the White House released, to little publicity, the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. That policy paper embraces the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike and on the battlefield; it also says a return to nuclear testing may soon be necessary. It was coupled with a request for $70 million to study and develop new types of nuclear weapons and to shorten the time it would take to test them.
I think that the real Republican agenda is to make liberals’ heads explode trying to wrap our minds around the endless contradictions of the GOP position. It is a cunning plan and one that I fear is working only too well.
Even if you choose not to vote, go check it out for the great links to new blogs, underappreciated blogs and best post nominations. It’s a treasure trove of great unsung lefty humor and insight.
UPDATE: While you’re over there, put some $$$$ in the tip jar. It’s costing the Wampum team big bucks to do this thing. This is a labor of love for the left blogosphere and we should give some of that love back.
[Sen.] Harry Reid said Monday his party will launch investigative hearings next year in response to what he said was the reluctance of Republicans to look into problems in the Bush administration.
“There are too many unasked and unanswered questions and the American public deserves better,” the Nevada senator said…
…Sen. Byron Dorgan…said the first hearing will be at the end of January and he suggested it might focus on contract abuse in Iraq…
They said issues that “cry out” for closer investigation…include the administration’s use of prewar intelligence and its reported effort to stifle information about the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Reid also mentioned global warming and the “No Child Left Behind” education program as topics that needed a closer look.
In all likelihood, they recognized the great success Rep. Henry Waxman and his staff had publishing their own report on federally funded abstinence-only programs.
That showed how a minority party can make news and put the majority party on the defensive.
Now the key is to tie all of this corruption, misdirection and ineptitude into Bush’s plan to destroy Social Security. I’m more and more convinced that this is not only necessary for its own sake, but will result in many other political rewards for the Democrats. Bush is a lame duck. He has far less political capital than he thinks he has. He’s fucked up the War on terror and he knows it and this is his last big chance for a “positive” long term legacy. If we are able to stop him we may just show the American people that we have some guts after all and position ourselves for a big come back in 06 and 08.
The alternative is to allow him to destroy the most succesful social program in the history of this country, an act that will affect real human beings in our towns, neighborhoods and families. If SS isn’t worth fighting for with everything we have then we truly are worthless.
Is there something about MSnbc that makes some writers particularly dumb about blogging? I just heard Chris Matthews say (as he does every night) “if you want to blog, go on over to Hardblogger at …”
The bloggers who follow technology consist of a particularly evolved community. The alphas, or “A-listers,” as they call themselves, commonly cross-link to one another, with the effect of having one of their comments amplified and commented on.
Ooooh. You say these “A-listers” cross link one another? And then people comment on their comments? Wow. I can hardly wait until the rest of the blogosphere is as evolved.
In the tech conferences you can often spot them in person, clustering toward the wall so they can keep their laptops plugged in. No matter where they are, they maintain a running conversation with their unseen audience, which can be as big as 20,000 visitors on a good day.
If that’s a good day then these “A-listers” are a bunch of punks. Atrios and Kos get that in an hour.
There is, of course, plenty of blog action in the tech sector but it is a tiny specialized corner compared to the much more highly evolved political blogosphere. But then, Newsweek probably thinks that Chris Matthews is a real blogger. Or rather they think that anyone reading Chris Matthews’ “blog” is a blogger.
September 22, 1993 – Bill Clinton, delivers his health care speech to a joint session of Congress … Response is overwhelmingly favorable. During TV interviews immediately afterward, House and Senate Republicans criticize Clinton for failing to provide specific details. HIAA and NFIB lobbyists, as well as lobbyists for other organizations, condemn the President’s remarks and repeatedly charge that the Clinton plan will lead to a “tremendous dislocation of employees” and prevent American families from keeping the health care they already have.[They begin a series of ads colllectively known as the “Harry and Louise spots.”]
September 28, 1993 – Hillary Clinton begins several days of testimony on health care before five congressional committees… Its very success, however, triggers new and intense activity among opponenys who see in her a foe whose defeat will require their most determined efforts.
October – November 1993 – Ira Magaziner is besieged by interest group representatives and members of Congress, all demanding last-minute adjustments.
October 27, 1993 – Clinton, in an attempt to recapture public support, formally presents his plan to Congress in a staged media event in the old chamber of the House. …House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois stuns observers with a forceful, bold, and unsparing attack on the very premise of the Clinton plan. Even those who have not closely followed the debate immediately understand what this laying down of the gauntlet by a moderate like Michel means: It is a clear signal of all-out Republican opposition.
November 1, 1993 – Hillary Clinton launches a scathing attack against the insurance industry to counter the highly damaging “Harry and Louise” ads…Her assault makes front-page newspaper stories, network TV news shows, and calls more attention to HIAA’s role and message.
The success of HIAA ads give an immense boost to the organization’s fund-raising. In the space of a few weeks, the budget for the campaign expands fivefold from $4 million to $20 million.In the end, HIAA raises and spends about $30 million more than its normal annual operating budget of $20 million — a grand total of almost $50 million to the lobbying effort. The money HIAA accumulates for the fight pays not only for the Harry and Louise ads but also for a grassroots campaign that dwarfs anything the interest group has ever done. The effort produces more than four hundred fifty thousand contacts with Congress — phone calls, visits, or letters -almost a thousand to every member of the House and Senate.
November 20, 1993 – The Health Care bill is finally presented to Congress.
December 2, 1993 – Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to “kill” — not amend — the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the “Contract With America,” Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America’s majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol’s strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.
December 19, 1993 – Stories about a new Clinton scandal continue to chip away at the reserves of political capital the President and First Lady will need when Congress returns in January.
January 3, 1994 – Republicans link Whitewater with health care reform in an allout campaign coordinated with the conservative talk radio network. The result: rising doubts that the public can trust Clinton in either case.
January 25, 1994 – The barrage of Whitewater stories continues, creating a siege mentality at the White House. Republicans openly embrace William Kristol’s latest advice: Oppose any Clinton health care reform “sight unseen” and adopt a stance that “There is no health care crisis.” Bob Dole uses this approach in his State of the Union response. During his talk Dole uses a chart — depicting a bewildering array of new government agencies and programs — to hammer home his point that the Clinton plan is government-run health care. The chart becomes a centerpiece in Capitol Hill debates and further frightens a public already Suspicious of government and increasingly distrustful of the President and the First Lady who have designed this new government program.
Late January 1994 – A critically influential — and intensely controversial — pair of articles appears on the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page and in the liberal New Republic…The White House, and other independent experts, say the articles are filled with patent falsehoods and distortions…Newt Gingrich will later characterize them as “the first decisive breakpoint” in support for the Clinton plan.
Early February 1994 – Another blow is dealt to the President’s credibility as former Arkansas state employee Paula Corbin Jones announces a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment and civil rights violations…the Business Roundtable, perhaps the most prestigious of all business groups, endorses the rival Cooper plan >as the best “starting point” for congressional action on health care reform.
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States changes its position and comes out against the Clinton plan. Behind the change of direction is an intensive grassroots campaign, waged against the Chamber’s national leadership by congressional Republicans and the No Name Coalition.
February 5, 1994 – The board of the National Association of Manufacturers passes a resolution declaring its opposition to the Clinton plan.
March 1994 – Democrat John Dingell approaches Carlos Moorhead of California -the senior Republican on his committee — to raise the possibility of working out a health bill together. According to Dingell, Moorhead responds: “There’s no way you’re going to get a single vote on this [Republican] side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we’ve been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose Our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party.”
March 4-5, 1994 – Newt Gingrich…implicitly warns GOP senators that any Republican concessions will be met with more Democratic demands. Phill Gramm also weighs in against any Republican compromise on health reform. This meeting becomes a crucial step, not in forming a Republican alternative to the Clinton plan but in demonstrating to Dole how dangerous it will be for him to be part of any compromise.
End of March 1994 – Republicans seize on Whitewater even more aggressively, once more linking it directly with health reform, House Republican Lamar Smith of Texas sends a letter to each of his House colleagues and all their administrative assistants and press secretaries urging them to focus on one theme in their speeches, columns for the press, and media and constituent contacts for the next week: “Whitewater and Health Care.” Included in the four-page letter is a list of suggested attack sound bites and quotes to be used by all GOP colleagues. In all this time nothing has been done by the White House to launch any kind of grassroots support campaign for health care reform.
April 19, 1994 – The Finance Committee begins holding closed-door sessions to discuss health care reform and deal with a central problem: how to finance the program the President wants. That same day,Rush Limbaugh, echoing the Republicans strategy line, tells his listeners that “Whitewater is about health care.”
May 31, 1994 – … pressure from the Republican Right increases. Six prominent conservative activists — Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly, L. Brent Bozell, and three others — send Dole and Gingrich an open letter warning that any “willingness to coinpromise on behalf of Big Government” will make it “impossible” for Dole and Gingrich to find conservative grassroots support in 1996.
A federal grand jury indicts Rep. Rostenkowski on seventeen counts of conspiring to defraud the government. He is required to step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — a crippling blow to any effort to pass health care reform through the House.
Spring 1994 – Republicans other than Newt Gingrich begin to see a tantalizing prospect of winning control of Congress by opposing the Clinton health plan as a quintessential example of Big Government Democratic liberalism run wild. An article in the right-wing American Spectator Suggests Dole’s presidential prospects hinge on his ability to block any govemment-run health care system. Dole’s top aide, Sheila Burke, quickly finds herself the target of abuse from ultraconservatives because of Dole’s seeming moderate stance.
Early June 1994 – Archconservatives plant stories in the news media targeting Republican moderates or anyone else who is not a “true believer.” During Senate Finance Committee deliberations on the reform bill, the Washington Times weighs in with more of the same. “Some GOP colleagues and their staff view Mr. Dole’s chief of staff and health care guru, Sheila Burke, as a liberal Democrat,” the paper said, adding, “‘Our No. 1’s No. 1 is a liberal Democrat.”‘
June 11, 1994 – At a Republican meeting in Boston, Dole promises to “filibuster and kill” any health care bill with an employer mandate.
June 15, 1994 – Bill Clinton begins individual Oval Office exploratory meetings with Senate Republican moderates Chafee, Durenberger, and Danforth. Clinton impresses them with his detailed knowledge of compromises tinder discussion and his eagerness to move the process forward. He complains to Durenberger, “Every time I start in the middle, Bob Dole moves the middle to the right.”
June 1994 – HIAA brings back its “Harry and Louise” campaign for another month’s run, this time targeting provisions in the Clinton plan that will impose backup controls on health care spending and require standard premiums for all those insured. At the same time, HIAA — in a blatantly cynical move — runs a print ad that appears only in Washington and is obviously intended to be conciliatory to the playmakers of the capital. The ad emphasizes HIAA’s support for universal health care coverage and insurance reform. Pro-reform groups fight back but are badly out spent. The DNC, for example, announces a one-week, $150,000 ad campaign, ostensibly designed to produce phone calls to Congress demanding “the real thing” in reform. But the DNC buys time only on Washington, D.C., stations — not in the grassroots, where it counts.
June 29, 1994 – The major business lobbies fighting the Clinton plan swing behind the Dole-Packwood bill in the Senate, as they had done behind the Rowland-Bilirakis bill in the House. Incremental reform is all they will support. The Republican National Committee, happy to have something to be for, launches ads saying this is the way — the only way — to achieve bipartisan agreement.
July 22, 1994 – Trying to win back the kind of political support that brought them to the White House, the administration plans a bus trek across America to generate their own grassroots message to Congress for reform. A kickoff rally in Portland, Oregon, is marred by anti-Clinton protesters. When the first buses reach the highway they find a broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, “This is Clinton Health Care.” The anti-bus trek protests are the crowning success of the No Name Coalition and especially of the conservative political interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). By the time the ill-fated bus caravan takes to the highways, CSE operatives, working closely — and secretly — with Newt Gingrich’s Capitol Hill office and with Republican senators, have mapped out plans to derail the Reform Riders wherever they go.
July 23, 1994 – Following several days of anti-Hillary rhetoric on local talk shows, Hillary Clinton — at a bus rally in Seattle — is confronted by hundreds of angry men shouting that the Clintons are going to destroy their way of life, ban guns, extend abortion rights, protect gays, and socialize medicine. When she finishes speaking and tries to leave the rally, her Iimousine is surrounded by protesters. Each of the four caravan routes becomes an expedition into enemy territory — with better-armed, better-prepared, better-mobilized anti-Clinton protesters at each stop along the way. Local reform groups and caravan organizers are forced to cancel scheduled stops because of implicit threats of violence.
July 24, 1994 – In an interview with Newt Gingrich, the New York Times reports that Gingrich has united House Republicans against passage of health reform and hopes “to use the issue as a springboard to win Republican control of the House.” Gingrich goes on to predict that Republicans will pick up thirty-four House seats in the November elections and that half a dozen disaffected Democrats will switch parties to give Republicans control. The story attracts little attention.
August 3, 1994 – Clinton gives an emotional address in the White House Rose Garden, where he and the First Lady greet six hundred Reform Riders after their buses finally arrive in Washington — timed to coincide with the day Mitchell introduces his health care reform “rescue” in the Senate, and Gephardt introduces his bill in the House. Mitchell’s compromise is much less bureaucratic and government-driven than the Clinton plan. It puts off any requirement that employers provide employees health insurance until early in the next century. It makes a major concession to small businesses by exempting any employer with twenty-five or fewer employees from providing coverage. And it aims at guaranteeing insurance for 95 percent of Americans by the year 2000.
Mid August 1994 – Newt Gingrich strikes. For more than a year, he has marshaled his forces like a guerrilla army and coordinated the Republican attack strategy with the congressional Theme Team and economic allies in the grassroots campaign. Now he springs his ambush by attacking — not the Democratic health bill being introduced in the House, but the least expected target, the crime bill. His plan is to bring Congress to a halt, strand the health effort, send lawmakers home, and deny Democrats the opportunity to record a vote on health care reform before the fall elections.
August 11, 1994 – Foley and Gephardt try to bring the crime bill before the full House for debate and then a vote. They know the procedural vote to begin debate will be close but they expect to prevail. Instead they lose by fifteen votes after fifty eight Democrats bolt their party and join the opposition. Congressional leaders announce that health care will be delayed indefinitely. Delay and obstruction also tie up the Senate.
August 15, 1994 – Mitchell threatens to keep the Senate in nonstop, round-the-clock session until Republicans agree to start voting.
August 16, 1994 – The final round of “Harry and Louise” commercials begins airing nationally. At the same time, the final outpouring of faxes, phone calls, and letters mounted by the small-business lobby floods Washington offices.
August 18, 1994 – Democrats gather for a private leadership luncheon. Though the initial remarks by senators are polite, they clearly contain strong criticism of the Mitchell bill. The meeting erupts into a stormy confrontation between Ted Kennedy and Bob Kerrey, who get into a shouting match that shows how deep the divisions in the Democratic party have become. This leaves observers stunned and convinced the party is falling apart.
August 25, 1994 – Democratic leaders of both congressional chambers give up on health care and announce they are letting their members go home for their much-postponed vacation. Neither the Senate (where Democrats outnumber Republicans fifty-six to forty-four) nor the House (with a Democratic majority of 257 to 176) has come close to passing, or even voting on, any health bill.
Late August 1994 – Democrats begin preparing for the November elections by distancing themselves from their President — and from the reform he has attempted.
September 19, 1994 – The New York Times reports remarks — never subsequently denied — that Bob Packwood made to his Republican senatorial colleagues during closed-door strategy sessions while he was managing the Republican attack during the summer. “We’ve killed health care reform,” Packwood told his fellow Republican senators. “Now we’ve got to make sure our fingerprints are not on it.” For many this is the “smoking gun”: proof of a carefully plotted, and secret, Republican strategy.
Congress reconvenes. Mitchell hopes to set aside four days for Senate debate on the new Mainstream bill and then schedule a straight up-or-down vote. Republicans begin mobilizing for a filibuster to keep the bill from reaching the floor. Supporters realize they don’t have enough votes to break the filibuster.
September 20, 1994 – Newt Gingrich privately warns Bill Clinton in the White House that if he continues to push for health reform in the closing days of the session, he will lose the Republican support needed to pass GATT, which the President believes is critical to the U.S. economic position as the leader of the Western alliance. George Mitchell, repeating this Gingrich threat to colleagues privately immediately after, describes it as “an atomic bomb blast.”
September 26, 1994 – At a news conference in the Capitol, George Mitchell pulls the plug on health care reform.
September 27, 1994 – William Kristol of the Project for the Republican Future spell out the next stage of the battle plan to change the makeup of Congress. “I think we can continue to wrap the Clinton plan around the necks of Democratic candidates.” Some observers urge the White House to make some kind of public statement about special interests, all the money expended, and the fact that most Republicans were clearly committed from day one to killing reform, but no statement is forthcoming.
October 7, 1994 – Congress adjourns.
November 8, 1994 – Voters deliver a massive repudiation of President Clinton, break the forty-year hold of Democrats on Congress, restore Republicans to power at ever level of government, and set the stage for a further test over the nation’s ideological future in 1996. In two years the Democrats have gone from a controlling majority 258 seats in the House of Representatives to a minority of 204. In all the contests House, Senate, and gubernatorial seats, not a single Republican seeking reelection loses.
Late 1994 – As the Gingrich Revolution in Congress prepares to assume office, a Gallup poll shows that 72 percent of the public lists major health care reform as a top or high priority. Only crime and deficit reduction rank higher.
REMINDER: The Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency when this went down.
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) sends a nice letter to the lobotomized castrati who edit the Washington Post…I like how we have to rely on career politicians to provide a check on the corruption and idiocy of the media. That’s a quite healthy situation, and not at all fucked up. Sleep tight.
This really is reaching crisis proportions. In order to appease the mouthbreathing neanderthals who insist that science is just another “opinion”, the L.C. are actually disseminating total bullshit to the public and calling it fact.
This is a problem. The people who believe Republican science are the ones driving big cars and handling your food. It’s dangerous.
I’m ridiculously busy and I don’t have time to write much about the circular firing squad. Still, I’ll write a few words in passing on which I’ll elaborate later.
If, in order to be “hard” we must support irrationality and grievous error then we are doomed as a country. We are simply too big for that. We will not have many chances to make the kind of mistake we’ve made with Iraq without suffering serious consequences. It is the very definition of hard nosed, cold hearted realism to say that we should not squander our military resources during a national security crisis by fighting the wrong goddamned war. It is not “soft” to note that sexually torturing citizens whom we were ostensibly liberating and whose cooperation we needed was a lousy war plan. And it is nothing short of hawkish to point out that proving to the whole world that our vaunted intelligence services couldn’t find Baghdad on a fucking map made this country and all its allies less safe. We are the reality based community and facing up to facts is the single most important thing we can do to protect this country. Letting the faith based morons who planned this debacle of a response to 9/11 off the hook and holding their hands in solidarity not only looks weak, it is weak.
But, as usual, all of this braying about repositioning and purging obscures the fact that we aren’t dealing with a policy issue at all, are we? We are once again drowning in perceptions, in which the alleged Democratic tough guys are accusing the alleged Democratic sissies of fucking things up and losing elections because the American people won’t support a party that is “soft” on … anything. They are right in a way but they fail to see why this perception is so widely held, who is responsible and how to change it. Mainly this is because the ones making this accusation think they are hard when they are actually soft.
I agree that we need a change in strategy. But, we’ve hit a wall compromising or cooperating with this modern Republican Party on issues. They have left us no room on policy except total capitulation. Anybody who doesn’t see that is definitely soft. (In the head.) Politics is now beyond issues. For Democrats, it’s existential.
Do we want the public to understand that we’re “hard?” Do we need for people to take us seriously as tough guys who will keep the country safe from the “ism” of the moment? Of course. But does anyone believe that we can demonstrate our powerful rigid tumescence to the public with academic papers or scholarly op-ed’s or earnest senate speeches? This argument always implies that we are campaigning in a vacuum and fails to take into consideration the nature of the opposition. We could be Beinartian Hawks or Kucinichian doves or George Patton or Ulysses S. Grant and it would mean nothing as long as the opposition comes up with simple marketing slogans to position our candidates and our ideas as soft and we do not respond in kind.
Let’s talk about flipping and flopping for a moment. That phrase didn’t come out of nowhere, you know. “Flip-flop” was not some complicated concept in which people were persuaded by examples in his record that Kerry was unprincipled or indecisive. “Flip-flop” was an uncomplicated, symbolic slogan that stood for flaccid penis. Yes, it’s really that simple, folks. People may not have been consciously aware that the term flip-flop was meant to unman our war hero candidate, but it did so just the same. And it played off of 35 years of exactly the same kind of imagery from “with hair that long, hippie, you can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to “he’s been botoxed.” This image doesn’t come from Michael Moore or indeed from any Democrat. It comes directly from the propaganda shop of the Republican party and it plays right into the lizard brains of certain white males and the women who inexplicably love them. It wouldn’t matter if Michael Moore joined the marines and MoveOn decided to merge with Club For Growth. The right has a tremendous investment in framing the left as too “soft” to keep the nation safe and they will continue to play that card no matter how tough we sound on terrorism. It is how they win.
But there is one surefire way to convince the American people that Democrats are “hard” enough to take on the enemies of the United States. And that would be for us to take on the goddamned Republicans. As long as we do not respond in kind to their in your face bully boy style of politics we will continue to look weak in the face of an existential threat — because we ARE weak. We can look to history for Scoop Jackson lessons or Arthur Schlessinger lessons, but they are not relevant to the problem at hand. Our problem is that since 1968 the Republicans have waged a take-no-prisoner war against the Democratic party and they use that proxy war to prove to the American people that they are tough enough to protect the American people from threats, both internal and external, and the Democrats are not. (Indeed, to listen to their most skilled polemicists, Democrats are the threat.) And despite the fact that they are completely full of shit, it works quite well because they practice what they preach by fighting every last Democrat to a standstill and when they lose they get right back up and start fighting again with everything they have. People can see exactly what they are about. They demonstrate it. We, on the other hand, talk a lot.
The father of the modern Republican party (perhaps modern American politics) is not sunny Reagan, it’s darkling Nixon. Until we finally grasp the nature of the opposition we will continue to lose. It is the central problem we face.
One word of advice. When George Will backs your ideas you need to rethink your position. Prominent Republican mouthpieces do not have our best interests at heart. Ever.
Those of you who follow the religious beat more closely than I do have probably seen this article called The Fundamentalist Agenda, by Davidson Loehr. I may not have religious experiences, but I do have epiphanies and reading this was one.
From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.
The five characteristics are
1) Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.
2) all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.
3) the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation
4) “they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. (Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it’s helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase ‘overcoming the modern’ is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.)”
5) Fundamentalists deny history in a “radical and idiosyncratic way.”
All of this is interesting and it’s interesting because it crosses all religions, cultural and regional boundries. When the scientists were presenting their abstracts, “several noted that all their papers were sounding alike, reporting on ‘species’ when studying the ‘genus’ was called for, that there were strong family resemblances between all fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other.”
Now, evolutionary psychology theories of the moment can be awfully facile because mostly they reinforce certain social norms that can easily be explained in other ways. (No Virginia, women do not necessarily practise fidelity and men do not “need” to spread their seed far and wide because of their alleged biological programming. It’s a lot more complicated than that.) Still, this explanation for fundamentalism — and more importantly perhaps, why it rears its ugly head from time to time is very thought provoking:
The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we’ve all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group’s territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.
It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.
What conservatives are conserving is the biological default setting of our species, which has strong family resemblances to the default setting of thousands of other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods as its projected champions.
Fundamentalism is absolutely natural, ancient, powerful—and inadequate. It’s a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it’s completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure humane societies.
Perhaps it is facile to suggest that these people are less evolved but well…if the shoe fits. I actually think this is a fairly decent explanation for the phenomenon.
The author goes on, however, to suggest that the reason for fundamentalism’s rise is that liberalism has failed to properly incorporate progress into society which leaves many people uncomfortable thus “defaulting” to the basic human response.
But for the liberal impulse to lead, liberals must remain in contact with the center of our territorial instinct and our need for a structure of responsibilities. Fundamentalist uprisings are a sign that the liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.
Just as it’s no coincidence that all fundamentalisms have similar agendas, it’s also no coincidence that the most successful liberal advances tend to wrap their expanded definitions in what sound like conservative categories.
John F. Kennedy’s most famous line sounds like the terrifying dictate of the world’s most arrogant fascist: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Imagine that line coming from Hitler, Khomeini, Mullah Omar, or Jerry Falwell. It is a conservative, even a fascist, slogan. Yet Kennedy used it to effect significant liberal transformations in our society. Under that umbrella he created the Peace Corps and vista programs and through them enlisted many young people to extend our hand to those we had not before seen as belonging to our in-group.
Likewise, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the rhetoric of a conservative vision to promote his liberal redefinition of the members of our in-group. When he defined all Americans as the children of God, those words could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban on the verge of putting a Bible in every school, a catechism in every legislature. Instead, King used that cry to include Americans of all colors in the sacred and protected group of “all God’s children”—which was just what many white Southerners were arguing against forty years ago.
When liberal visions work, it’s because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.
He’s basically saying that in order to pave the way for change, liberals have to first be aware of the sacred symbols and rhetoric of traditionalism and then attempt to harness those symbols to advance our cause. I think there is some truth in that.
The Bible is one, of course, but so are the “sacred” texts of our nation, those that outline the rules and beliefs of our territory and tribe. Those symbols and totems are powerful mojo for the other side if we don’t lay claim to them. They mean more than just surface martial nationalistic nonsense — indeed, if this thesis is true, they may be more powerful than Christian fundamentalism. At the very least, liberals should embrace the symbols like the flag and the constitution and all the apple pie traditions with the knowledge that if we don’t, a more pernicious force will. It’s about the power of deeply held territorial impulses. Christianity and Islam are only a couple of thousand years old. As the author says, the [fundamentalists] have “severely understated the authority for their position.” Perhaps we should stake that authority for our side in service of our ideals.
I can think of a few ways we might do this. The first that comes to mind is to pit fundamentalism against territory. If this retreat to fundamentalism is really a default to primitive biology, then we can frame this as America vs the fundamentalists. And lucky for us, it’s easy to do and will confuse the shit out of the right. We have a built in boogie man fundamentalist named Osama on whom we can pin all this ANTI-AMERICAN fundamentalist dogma while subtly drawing the obvious parallels between him and the homegrown variety.
We start by having the womens’ groups decrying the Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST view of womens rights. These FUNDAMENTALISTS want to roll back the clock and make women answer to men. In AMERICA we don’t believe in that. Then we have the Human Rights Campaign loudly criticizing the Islamic FUNDAMENTALISTS for it’s treatment of gays. In AMERICA we believe that all people have inalienable rights. The ACLU puts out a statement about the lack of civil liberties in Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST theocracies. In AMERICA we believe in the Bill of Rights, not the word of unelected mullahs.
You got a problem with that Jerry? Pat? Karl????
Pit American liberalism against Islamic Fundamentalism. Since it’s pretty much exactly like Christian fundamentalism, perhaps at least a few people will draw the obvious conclusions. But more importantly, it places us with, as the author says, “one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.” This way we define the territory as being ours while at the same time placing the fundamentalists firmly outside of it by using the symbols of territory instead of religion.
I am concluding more and more that we are dealing with a pre-modern political situation in a post modern world. It’s not about issues, it’s about tribal identity. We have to start thinking in terms of how to communicate our ideals and our vision in symbolic terms. Go for the gut, not the head. My view is that we can do this by using our sacred political symbols to illustrate what we believe in. People use the Bible and that’s just fine. But it isn’t the only game in town. “This Land Is Your Land” can bring a tear to the eye as well. And if this fellow is correct in that religion is being used in service of something far more primal than we realize then there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat.
I’d be interested in hearing other ideas you may have about how we might communicate by keeping “one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin,” without compromising our principles or our agenda.
(And yes, I’ve read Lakoff. He’s great, but we need to consider not only framing, but the context of the argument and the “feelings” into which we want to tap. I think this issue of territorial impulse and biological default settings in times of rapid social change is one way to think about it. There are, undoubtedly many others.)
Thanks to this exceptional rundown of the “abstinence only” story from Barbara O’Brien, from which I got the link to the article. I highly recommend you read both if you are interested in this topic.
Update: My apologies to Barbara O’Brien, whose name I got wrong and have since corrected.
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