Month: November 2006

Another sunny day in Dublin, Ireland, 11.19 am.

A reader doesn’t want to cut Goldberg or Limbaugh any slack:

There exists in every organization, whether it be a football team, a business, a political party, or a military, a point at which it is to the individuals folly to continue to subordinate their will in favor of the directives of their individuals.  A quarterback shouldn’t follow his coaches plan to run into the wrong end zone, an administrative assistant should not follow his bosses directions to engage in illegal business practices that will ultimately bankrupt the company, soldiers should not follow orders to round up Jews and send them to the gas chamber, and even generals committed to the idea of civilian control of the military must still at some point do what they can to dissuade their civilian superiors from a disastrous course.

It is so tempting to praise the famous discipline of the Republican coalition of the past few years, from Bush to Delay to Rush, as a critical component of what felt like great strength and success.  But the failure to recognize that line where individuals needed to press back against the direction of their leaders was also an essential component of why so many of their actions resulted in catastrophe.

There is no easy guideline for when you need to stop being a team player who just tows the line and become a conscientious dissenter. But individuals who follow orders well past that point should definitely be considered lackeys, hypocrites, complicit accomplices, or worse.

Ideological lickspittle, perhaps?

Well, that seems to be the president’s determination in Iraq, according to the Guardian. Will 20,000 more troops in Baghdad be enough? I doubt it. Just enough troops to lose … again? Let’s hope not. Diplomatic outreach to Iran and Syria or a regional summit? I cannot imagine Cheney signing off on that, but anything else is a sign that the administration is still in denial about the gravity of the situation. Money quote from "a former senior administration official":

"Bush has said ‘no’ to withdrawal, so what else do you have? The Baker report will be a set of ideas, more realistic than in the past, that can be used as political tools. What they’re going to say is: lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it."

(Photo of General Abizaid: Alex Wong/Getty.)

A reader adds:

I do think that you get to the point regarding your reader’s comments about playing on a team. Many self-styled conservative pundits are not quite being honest about their membership on the Republican team. They play without their jerseys. The line many of these people take (I am sure that examples abound online) is that ‘we support the Republicans because they are conservative’ when the truth is ‘we support the Republicans because we are Republicans’. In my view this is the core dishonesty embedded in the National Review, Limbaugh, Hewitt, O‚ÄôReilly, Coulter, etc that makes people like you and John Cole and others so very angry. And of course they are all angry at you, because you and others are pointing to the wide play of daylight between principled conservatism and the Republican movement.

That just about sums it up, I think. It certainly helps explain the intensity of the anger on both sides.

Jason Kuznicki hs a very elegant and persuasive criticism of part of my book on his blog, "Positive Liberty." The conservatism I sketch is very suspicious of what might be called "natural law." My main skepticism is toward the natural law Thomists who want to rest current morality on arguments deduced from medieval and Greek teleology and biology. And Kuznicki doesn’t disagree on this. But he argues that the natural law of Jefferson and Adams survives in much better shape:

[T]he classical liberal idea of natural law was not the product of one man or a small group hoping to reshape all of human society according to some grandiose philosophical vision. Divided government and religious freedom were attempted only out of desperation, when all else had failed, in the exhaustion that came from centuries of religious warfare in Europe. They were putative natural laws, yes — but they were not the kind of greedy, reductionist, dogmatic natural laws that we have seen in the meantime.

Further, wherever these ideas have been given a fair trial, they have brought peace, liberty, and prosperity. The very fact that we are still discussing Jefferson’s formulation today, and that the United States is still formally founded upon it, is ample demonstration of the practical value of natural law in the classical liberal tradition.

In Kuznicki’s first two sentences, you have perhaps a reconciliation between Jefferson’s natural law and Oakeshott’s conservatism. If you think of the natural law as a product of a tradition above all, then you have a conservative grounding of a form of liberalism. But it also has force as an idea in its own right, and is based on a concept of God that is weak enough and broad enough that it might be seen as achievable in a diverse modernity:

To the founders, nature’s God was the deity of every religion — and of none. Nature’s God was present wherever religionists of any faith showed decency and kindness toward their fellow man; nature’s God was absent when the faithful were cruel, intolerant, or uncharitable. Nature’s God demanded that every one of us come to Him on our own terms, not under threat of compulsion. Why not? Because it is impossible to imagine a God who wanted compelled, inauthentic, grudgingly given prayers.

I wonder if that is entirely true, though. Many have imagined many such Gods. The great temptation of all belief is to lean toward indoctrination and even coercion in its implementation. Some Gods do compel submission (this is at the core of the struggle within Islam, is it not?). And Kuznicki’s back-up argument is simply that this idea of natural law has stood up pretty well over the centuries, has made for a happy and productive society. But that too is very close to an Oakeshottian defense of Western liberty as well.

I still believe Oakeshott’s defense is more sustainable. But Kuznicki reveals one of the weaker points in my case. I can see, in other words, where I have given too short shrift in the book to the Jeffersonian idea of a nature’s God as the source of divided government and individual liberty. I’m grateful for the extra perspective.

The GOP is still spending like, er, Republicans.

It’s a great site, appropriately named, devoted to matters of faith. My Q and A can be found here.

"There’s something painfully ironic about Trent Lott being named ‘minority whip,’" – Robert A. George.

Not really a music video, just a classic ’80s genre: the movie montage. If only our current war could be won in a workout:

A reader protests:

You disavow prescribing a political program in your book. You just elucidate principles and guiding lights for policy makers. However, politics is a contact sport. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers are promoting a political program. They have to be team players. They have to hold their tongue when the coaches (President Bush, Hastert, etc.) call dumb plays. They are cheerleaders who are exhorting their listeners to beat the Democrats and the Left in America. Anyone with experience in teams (corporate, athletic, military) that actually function effectively with coordinated action knows that the individual must subordinate his will to the team’s goals. It’s childish to call a team member a lackey or a hypocrite for sticking with his teammates and refusing to publicly criticize the coaches even if he doesn’t like the plays being called.

So cut them some slack. Of course, they cannot engage you on the same level with the same intellectual openness that you demand. That would compromise their mission and their livelihood. Pick on someone in your own league who doesn’t get dirty in the arena of political combat. Yes, to form a Republican majority means forming coalitions with religious conservatives, spendthrift Northeasterners, and libertarian Westerners. It’s messy. It’s seldom coherent. I’m frustrated, but I understand.

I sense that part of the frustration motivating the intemperate remarks in Jonah’s review of your book springs from your failure to recognize this division of political labor. If you recognized this division of labor, then maybe you could more charitable toward your critics.

The reader has a point. I really have few truly partisan instincts. Maybe that’s because I grew up as a Tory, not a Republican, and so don’t have American partisanship in my blood. Maybe it’s just my generally non-joiner personality. I chose to be a writer rather than a politician for a reason. I can be more honest as a writer. And my people skills are limited. In the book, I do indeed tackle serious arguments by non-partisan thinkers. On my blog, I’m free to tackle anything someone writes.

I’ll concede this, as well. If Goldberg, Hewitt and Limbaugh simply declared that they were Republicans, working within and for a political party, my reader’s point would hold water. But they want both to claim such an allegiance and yet also speak for something called "conservatism." My point is a basic one: in most periods, this finessing between party and principle is a difficult task. But today, when the GOP has abandoned the most basic conservative principles, it’s impossible.

I can understand their frustration. I can understand their anger at someone exposing their cognitive dissonance and spin. But it really is their problem, not mine. The job of a writer is not to express "charity" toward other ideas or players. It is to express one’s own views as honestly as one can. I don’t know what else I am supposed to do. If that upsets some, too bad. I have enough friends already.