Forgetting Wilson (Reply to Jonah Goldberg)
posted at 6:08 pm on May 15, 2010 by CK MacLeod
Much as I might enjoy debating the comparative progressivism of President Warren “Racial Amalgamation There Cannot Be” Harding; much as, armed by biography, I’m ready to stand up for Professor President Thomas Woodrow Wilson against the dextrosphere’s leading anti-intellectual intellectuals, I’m happy to accept Jonah Goldberg’s suggestion that we look instead to larger and more pressing issues:
The reason why it is both important and necessary for conservatives to tackle the progressive era is that that’s where the assumptions of 20th century liberalism begin… If Wilson isn’t the best poster boy for Progressivism, tactically or substantively, I’m open to alternative nominations. But the notion that conservatives are wasting energy in assaulting the progressive era strikes me as exactly wrong. We’ve wasted time in not attacking until all too recently.
In the process of quite correctly characterizing my prior defense of Wilson as not “all that powerful” (I was seeking balance, not apotheosis), Mr. Goldberg also gives his own view on relevant context (emphasis in the original):
A big chunk of [MacLeod's] critique boils down to an argument I’ve heard many times: Wilson (or this or that progressive) merely reflected the prevailing ideas at the time. Well, that’s sort of my argument, you know? That these were the prevailing ideas at the time: Collectivism, eugenics, militarism (both as a mobilizing metaphor as well as the real thing), nationalism, statolatry, technocracy and – in America – a desire to “Europeanize,” often on Bismarckian lines, political institutions and arrangements. And while these ideas were popular in all sorts of places, their champions were the Progressives.
As volunteer conservative left deviationist progressive apologist, I have previously composed my own lists of to me less obviously bad progressivisms, seeking to highlight those Progressive Era reforms that I judge as integrated with American life, but, even if we stick with Goldberg’s version, we’re still left with perhaps the largest question: Why were the Progressives able not just to champion these things, but in championing them gain control of American politics, and set the country and the world on a course they’ve been on ever since?
Some might want to attribute the Progressives’ vast political success to the diabolical genius of charismatics, conspirators, and tricksters, but much more persuasive explanations are readily available. They often start with statistics on American life from the middle of the 19th Century to the first decades of the 20th (Wilson’s lifespan, one point for posterization) regarding employment, urbanization, production, immigration, communication, transportation, fertility, income, and on and on. For example: Population: More than quadrupled, 50% of the increase through immigration. Proportion receiving wages and living in urban settings: From small minority to vast majority. Communication: speed of horse to speed of light.
It was in relation to such changes that Goldberg’s favorite scholar, Ronald Pestritto, was questioned by his colleague Jean M. Yarbrough, in the conclusion of her review of Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism and Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings:
[O]ne wishes that Pestritto had extended his analysis to the presidential years to see how Wilson’s academic theories fared when confronted with political reality. Although [Roots...] touches briefly on the 1912 election and beyond in a concluding chapter, this question goes largely unexplored. Finally, one wishes that Pestritto had given his political imagination a bit more scope and had tried to envision what solutions to the novel problems of industrialization, urbanization, and mass immigration, as well as the old problems of racial injustice and growing economic inequality, the founders might have devised.
Yes, indeed, one surely might so finally wish – for these are exactly the problems that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, numerous lesser politicians, sundry intellectuals publishing relatively late in the Populist-Progressive Era, and, more important, millions upon millions of Americans not only set themselves to solving intellectually, but were confronting everywhere, everyday, without a century to ponder possible over-dependence on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and regardless of how much they might have preferred to live in a Jeffersonian agrarian republic, a Bellamyite super-commune, or, equally unreachable, the largely pre-industrial America of Wilson’s early childhood.
Once we accept that, for better or worse, the Progressives were responding to Something Real, then it’s clear that the task for conservatives isn’t to find good reasons to “condemn” Wilson or anyone else, but to develop alternative, additional, or ameliorative responses, if any, to that manifold Something Real – still with us, 100 years more real and manifold, and greater in extent by circumferences of the planet, at least, in multiple dimensions. If, like a commenter at HotAir, you’re happy to dismiss the Federal Reserve System, Anti-Trust legislation, and the Federal Trade Commission as “junk, junk, junk,” then just how do you propose to distribute capital equitably and productively in a complex modern economy, and to preserve competitive and entrepreneurial opportunities for small and medium business? Before you answer: Remember to achieve the same thing in relation to the globalization of raw economic and political power that Americans of the Progressive Era accomplished on the national level. The same burden must be lifted or off-loaded for every other aspect of Progressivism and post-Progressivism that you, radical-constitutional anti-statist anti-prog to your toes, must be ready to dispose of instantly, as so much junk, junk, junk.
As the scope of our inquiry thus widens to encompass the present day, it naturally circumscribes the further past as well, but Goldberg demurs: Responding to his friend US News writer Scott Galupo, Goldberg rejected the idea in a manner that resembles his rejection of that un-powerful mitigation defense of mine discussed above:
If you want to claim everything stemming from the Western Enlightenment tradition as “progressive” you’re free to do so. But analytically, where does that get you? By this logic we’re all progressives—and by all, I mean conservatives, libertarians, Bolsheviks, liberals, anarchists, and Maoists—because we’re not Medievalists.
Maybe it gets us this far: The Progressives were not an aberration. They represent continuity, under radically transformed circumstances, in the same direction as the Founders’ historic statement to the ages, which has been succinctly translated into modern vernacular by historian Gordon Wood:
The illimitable progress of mankind promised by the Enlightenment could at last be made coincident with the history of a single nation. For the Americans at least, and for others if they followed, the endless cycle of history could finally be broken.
It was much the same promise that Tommy W. Wilson, 24 years old, could embrace in 1881, when he associated himself with a “younger generation of Southern men… full of the progressive spirit.” It’s the same promise all Americans still have available to them more than a century later – among other things: to progress beyond Progressivism, and to expose today’s nominal progressives as the regressive, reactionary anachronisms they too often are.
For the space of an extended epoch, men and women of the progressive spirit re-defined America because Americans increasingly voted for them to do so. Compared to the socialists, communists, anarchists, and, later, the fascists, all representing varieties of panic in the face of industrialism and its discontents, the Progressives qualify as relatively and meaningfully conservative. Whatever they perceived, thought, and did wrong, they conserved enough of the American possibility for us still to be arguing about it today – in their day no certain prospect.
No one sane has a way forward that won’t still leave us in their shadow for the foreseeable/imaginable future. Their mere negation may have seemed a tenable political position at the dawn of the Age or Episode of Obama, but is less so under approaching responsibility, in perilous times. I differ with Robert Laird/Instapunk on particulars, but I like how he frames the needed discussion in his own post on Wilson – away from “him” or “them,” toward “us” (original emphasis):
The potential destruction of America and its constitution is not a predestined outcome of a plot hatched by Woodrow Wilson and his racist, anti-semitic Princeton football cronies. It’s a possible outcome of our inattentiveness, our indifference, our poor decision making, our short-sighted thinking and convenient memories. It’s nice to know where dangerous and contemporarily destructive ideas originated. But it doesn’t absolve us of our responsibilities. Which are located in the here and now, with absolutely no room for evasion or delusion.
In other words: Forget Wilson. He doesn’t really matter.
Of much more concern: The deep improbability that the bromides of yesteryear – sung over a chorus of “NO!” – can do more than motivate a fickle segment of the electorate for a short while, or to any great purpose. This assessment seems to haunt the hated, hunted pundits and office-holders who decline the path of least immediate resistance to the Tea Party and its hosts. Meanwhile, the hard right’s anger with the “traitors,” with the progressives, and with the Wilsonian Progressives – not the disagreement, the annihilating anger – derives first from their self-imposed isolation from the American project, but also from fearful uncertainty, no clear idea what the dog will do with the rambling wreck if he catches it; and from fearful certainty, of the compromises and betrayals to come, forced on imaginary purisms by consensual mass democracy.
Conservatives will, by definition, look to the past for inspiration and instruction. The 18th Century British politician and essayist Edmund Burke, a man whom Jonah Goldberg likes to call the founding father of modern conservatism, had much sage advice, but his idioms will strike many Americans as obscure. Fortunately, the United States produced at least one major interpreter of Burke’s conservatism for un-conservative times (my emphasis):
Questions of government are moral questions, and … questions of morals cannot always be squared with rules of logic, but run through as many ranges of variety as the circumstances of life itself. … The politics of the English-speaking peoples has never been speculative; it has always been profoundly practical and utilitarian. Speculative politics treats man and situations as they are supposed to be; practical politics treats them (upon no general plan, but in detail) as they are found to be at the moment of actual contact.
As for that Burkean – his name, what else he had to say – I think we just agreed to forget him, though I’m willing to re-consider.
cross-posted at Zombie Contentions
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What do you mean by “annihilating anger,” and what qualifies someone as a member of “the hard right” you so scarily describe?
OhioCoastie on May 15, 2010 at 11:26 PM
What do you mean by “annihilating anger,” and what qualifies someone as a member of this “hard right” that you so scarily describe?
Is Jonah Goldberg one of them?
OhioCoastie on May 15, 2010 at 11:28 PM
It is called the competitive process, aka, the market.
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 12:38 AM
Which failed miserably, regularly in the era prior to the Fed. A depression every 10 years. A panic in 1907 that required the personal intervention of JP Morgan to rescue the capital markets. Farmers who felt severely enough disadvantaged, especially during the depressions and panics, to start the free silver movement that propelled Bryan to national prominence. Vertically integrated economic combines – trusts and holding companies that made it impossible for small and medium-sized business to compete, wiped out local artisans, cornered or controlled transportation and resources, and were vastly larger than the government entities weakly empowered to cope with them.
For starters. It was to preserve the possibility of a meaningfully “free” market that the “junk” was created. Most free market conservatives, at least until recently, understood that.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 1:24 AM
Jonah Goldberg maintains a moderate demeanor, maintains friendships across ideological lines, and has always seemed to me like a genuinely nice guy – never met him, just going from his writings and TV appearances. The implications of his rhetoric are more radical than he sometimes seems to want them to be – though we’re getting into a hazy area here on intentions and mind-reading and such. Others have taken his ideas much further, simplifying and in some cases re-packaging them, sometimes with his cooperation.
I gave some examples of annihilating anger in my prior piece. “Tyrannical fascist f**k you” qualifies, for instance; Beck’s demagogy, which he’s tried to blunt with his Gandhi shtick, but can’t stay away from; Levin’s rage and derision; the first five or six commenters on any HotAir headline thread that mentions David Frum, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and other well-known “polite company conservatives”; anger that is reflexive and radical enough to annihilate the possibility for dialogue, compromise, or consideration, that seeks to criminalize political differences, that depicts fellow citizens on the other side as diseases, traitors, virtual invaders, etc., etc., that distorts their arguments or always puts whatever they say in the worst possible light, that assumes unbridgeable polarization and then goes about making sure things stay that way.
Off the top of my head. You got a better expression than “annihilating anger,” I’m all ears and will consider editing the post. As for who’s a member of the “scary” (your expression) hard right, I think the term is a pretty conventional one. It should go without saying – nothing I wrote implies otherwise – that not everyone on the hard right is angry about it or expresses anger, hostility, and other violent emotions as a regular part of their politics, and I’d be the first to admit that there’s a hard left that’s at least as far gone if not further.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 1:37 AM
CK, do you know how capital is “distributed” in the part of our economy still governed by markets? Do you know how Apple’s capitalization grew to the size it is today?
The capital was “distributed” by consumers’ buying and their abstention from buying. Businesses that serve consumers best make profits; they reinvest those profits to expand their production. Businesses that do a poor job serving customers soon find that they have no capital.
You seem to prefer some kind of state planning.
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 4:01 AM
CK, do you know how many banks failed in Canada during the Great Depression?
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 4:03 AM
Are there conservatives that are against Anti-Trust legislation? Maybe, but then they are not real champions of free-markets as understood by this conservative. As for the Federal Reserve, I think it would be fair to call it a mixed bag. Banks still fail, though not with the alacrity and regularity they did pre-Fed. But, while calming the animal spirits, the Fed also acts as a de facto monopolist of money and interest rates. This assumes that a few highly educated and intelligent individuals are more able to produce positive outcomes by controlling money supply and i rates than a market-place filled with hundred of millions of consumers/traders/investors. I would liken it to Social Security. It will work and be popular until it doesn’t and isn’t. So you have to use your imagination when deciding if the Fed is good or bad. Has the stability it has provided for 100 years outweighed the likely (inevitable?) catastrophe coming when market manipulation leads to uncontrollable inflation? Or is it even fair to say that, sans Fed, we would not have been a more productive, and volatile, society? To put it plainly, you can’t simply point to the good of the Fed without envisioning all opportunity costs of its implementation, or taking into account as yet unseen consequences.
I do not know enough about the FTC to pass judgment, but let it suffice to say that I still believe in “buyer beware” and that the FTC is just as commonly used for anti-market purposes as it is (was?) used for pro-market purposes.
The other part of your section I take issue with is the “small and medium business protection” sentence. I don’t have anything against s&m business (chuckle) but I fail to see how they are inherently more just/productive/necessary vis big business. Perhaps you could enlighten me on why they need particular protection (other than anti-trust, which I have already said I agree with).
Aquateen Hungerforce on May 16, 2010 at 6:29 AM
So you’re saying you would see no difference if that same process were applied in a consumer-driven economy like we have now, which is starkly different from the civilization of 1900?
I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up. That’s an incredibly tall cardboard pedestal you’re standing on.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 1:12 PM
Why, no. Don’t see why you would take it that way.
Fashioned from just a splinter of that astoundingly large chip you lug around on your shoulder.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 2:30 PM
CK, the answer the question about Canadian banks failing is: zero. Canada had no central bank, and no laws preventing mergers across provincial lines. Canadian banks are strong. None have failed in the last mortgage-lending binge pushed by the Fed and FannieMae.
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 3:12 PM
I can recommend Armenick Armentano.
And also George Reisman’s Capitalism.
And a quote from Reisman, p.387:
“However surprising is may seem, the antitrust laws constitute promonopoly legislation. They reserve markets to the exclusive possession of all but those who in a state of freedom of competition would occupy them. They monopolize markets precisely against the most capable and efficient firms, which, in their absence, would be able to be in those markets, and which instead, because of their existence, are today forcibly excluded from them. They prevent the capable newcomer from entering an industry–for example, they would almost certainly operate to prevent General Motors from entering the steel industry in any significant way. They prevent the capable firms within an industry from acquiring the markets of the less capable ones by absorbing them in mergers, by buying them out, or by driving them out. Ironically, while endless complaints are made about such things as high capital requirements and lack of technological knowledge as “barriers to entry,” no voices are raised to complain about the antitrust laws’ forcible exclusion from markets of precisely those firms which do have the capital and technological knowledge required to enter them. In serving forcibly to exclude from markets precisely those firms which have the ability to enter and compete in them, the antitrust laws constitute a major violation of the freedom of entry and the freedom of competition. As such, they are among the most important instances of promonopoly legislation.”
.
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 3:32 PM
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 3:12 PM
Not sure why you consider that factoid of great significance to this discussion. Don’t know from my own knowledge whether that’s true about the banks in Canada during the Great Depression. If so, it may be interesting, but I’m not sure you’d want to advertise the Canadian system of that time: Maybe no banks failed, but 4 entire provinces and numerous municipalities collapsed.
and
from
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=a1ARTA0003425
Not sure what Fannie, Freddie, or the fabulousness of recent Candadian banking/lending policy has to do with the discussion either. Or for that matter the number of bank failures in Brazil, China, or on Mars.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 3:38 PM
CK, that factoid is pertinent because you assert that a market economy cannot function without, among other things, a central bank like the Fed.
The Fed was created for the purpose of providing liquidity to solvent banks in stressful situations. In the crisis that hit in 1930 it failed, as did thousands of banks.
In Canada, where antitrust laws did not hinder competition across provincial lines, and where there was no central bank, not one of the banks failed. This was the case even though, as you point out, that the Canadian economy was even more vulnerable (in a time of rising tariffs) due to its reliance on agricultural exports.
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM
Actually, I don’t make that assertion anywhere. My argument was that, if you’re going to declare Progressivism the Enemy Cancer, then, for example with the Fed, you’re obligated to design and explain your alternative system (or lack of system) and assess the trade-offs involved in eliminating the tumor – and this goes for every other Progressive Enemy-Tumor, from women’s suffrage to child labor laws to campaign finance disclosure to open deliberation of congressional committees. Otherwise, you’re just drafting a caricature for the agitation of the uninformed – that is, participating in demagogy.
Also, to my understanding, the purpose of the Fed as designed in the original act wasn’t just to provide liquidity in stressful situations, but to provide liquidity generally, thus the relatively de-centralized structure. For farmers and for business/economic interests outside or under the East Coast financial centers, economic life was perceived to be a non-stop stressful or inequitable situation.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 4:25 PM
A man of the right, arguing all-out for the left. Makes sense to me.
A man who says he wants to redefine progressivism to mean a more loving big brother, arguing on behalf of the worst progressives, the demagogues.
Is this more of a concern troll thing? Why isn’t this poster at Huffpo?
Where is the constitutionally derived authority for the Feds to “equitably distribute capital?” For God’s sake, if that doesn’t end the dispute right there, what will?
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:27 PM
Wait…you’re the one who’s made multiple posts where you chide and reproach the Hot Air commenter community…but I’m the one with a chip on their shoulder?
Right.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 4:33 PM
My argument was that, if you’re going to declare Progressivism the Enemy Cancer, then, for example with the Fed, you’re obligated to design and explain your alternative system (or lack of system) and assess the trade-offs involved in eliminating the tumor – and this goes for every other Progressive Enemy-Tumor, from women’s suffrage to child labor laws to campaign finance disclosure to open deliberation of congressional committees
Nonsense. Observing that the Feds may not do these things, or should not, means we must postulate something in its place?
You don’t get to stack the deck. You don’t get to tell us what we must do.
How do you argue against universal central planning in all sectors if this is true? What basis for the states exist at all?
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:33 PM
This whole CK Mac thingy is just concern trolling run amok.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:36 PM
I am not up on the legalese of anti-trust laws, and so I don’t know why they would prevent GM from entering the steel industry, except to stave off a vertical monopoly. But that seems, to me at least, a misuse of anti-trust powers. Perhaps I should have looked more deeply into the matter, but I was going off theory, not practice (admittedly, not to bright when talking of govt. power).
But it still seems clear to me that having an extra-market entity ensuring the ability for competitive entrance to a market is sound economics. I think the temptation of abuse by monopolists is too great to not take action against them (thus my problems with the Fed). And, it is not necessarily true that a monopoly would be the most efficient player in a market. See the TVA for example. There is simply no incentive for the monopolist to produce in an efficient manner, or to meet market demands. So I would qualify my support for anti-trust laws to those that increase competition.
Aquateen Hungerforce on May 16, 2010 at 4:46 PM
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:33 PM
If you’re going to start from year zero like Pol Pot or something, then, sure you can play let’s pretend there’s no Fed, there’s no women’s suffrage, there’s no history of progressive legislation or of the issues it was meant to address.
You can fantasize and post from morning til night about your dream-world of “least possible government” (Beck), but if you don’t have a practical and desirable and well-thought-out way to get there from here, you might as be playing with toy soldiers and calling it war. Or you could try campaigning on the elimination of Medicare, Social Security, the Fed, political reform, etc. If you prefer to preserve any elements of Medicare, Social Security, the Fed, political reform, etc., etc., ETC., then you’re a progressive statist, too, but just get off pretending you’re something essentially better and that everyone who doesn’t is “just concern trolling run amok.”
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 4:46 PM
“However surprising is may seem, the antitrust laws constitute promonopoly legislation. They reserve markets to the exclusive possession of all but those who in a state of freedom of competition would occupy them.
And for more than just monopolies. Goldberg makes the case that progressive legislation is in fact favored by the bigger firms as they can absorb the extra costs. Like GE, they simply get into bed with the Feds and write the rules that eliminate as much of their competition as possible.
The writer (chain yanker) is simply once again and as always, assuming that the progressive intent is unassailable, and further, that the intent is as stated, when the results indicate that only a fool could have assumed that.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:49 PM
H-AT
Yes. You’re substituting one monopolist for another. And like Lewis says one who torments without end, for he has the approval of his own conscience.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:52 PM
Or you could try campaigning on the elimination of Medicare, Social Security, the Fed, political reform, etc.
Is it your contention these programs will continue much longer? Can’t you see they are vote buyers, and tools of income redistribution?
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 4:54 PM
So your problem is with criticism? I’ve written posts that have used examples of statements drawn from HotAir and other sites, posts and comments, positive and negative.
They’re a valid topic for discussion, unless your problem is with discussion itself. Mutual admiration society is not interesting to me. It’s my explicit position that the right needs to take seriously the responsibility it’s anticipating taking on.
As for the commenter community, it can take it. Certainly has no problem dishing it out.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 4:54 PM
but if you don’t have a practical and desirable and well-thought-out way to get there from here, you might as be playing with toy soldiers and calling it war
Very well, I’ll play.
I propose immigration enforcement, repeal of Obamacare, refutation of Cap and Trade, a flat tax of 15%, health insurance sold across state lines, aggressive development of energy resources, and across the board spending cuts to take the debt down to year 2000 levels in 10 years.
No more bailouts, and an audit of the Fed so we can see what they are doing with our money. A program to shore up the dollar.
Let us see what that accomplishes.
I think the states can handle things like child labor and the rest.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:01 PM
Left my crystal ball at home. My guess is that these programs will out-survive you and me in some fashion, though almost certainly after having been altered substantially.
It’s easy to distribute cash to individuals. It’s one of the few things the government does well. What that cash is actually worth is another question.
I used to have a German girlfriend who said – can’t vouch for the truth of it – that one reason her people were statists was that the social security checks kept coming even the Russians were taking Berlin.
And a politician who campaigned on ending Social Security, Medicare, the Fed…? Can you name one who can be taken seriously – or at all? Even Rand Paul wants to reverse Medicare disbursement cuts to doctors. You can’t find entitlements on his web site. He’s all for expanding the VA. He doesn’t call for eliminating the Fed, he calls for reforming it… a little.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM
My guess is that these programs will out-survive you and me in some fashion, though almost certainly after having been altered substantially.
Yes, they will become official welfare, which they have been already for decades.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:11 PM
So all of this is fine? Do you not see the state must be choke collared into submission?
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Can you name one who can be taken seriously – or at all? Even Rand Paul wants to reverse Medicare disbursement cuts to doctors. You can’t find entitlements on his web site. He’s all for expanding the VA. He doesn’t call for eliminating the Fed, he calls for reforming it… a little.
It won’t matter much longer. The economy will only crater if tax is raised, and the AAA rating will go within 3 years.
If we do not summon the courage to reign in the state, we will become the Northern Hemishere’s Argentina. Right now, I’d say that’s the likely outcome as we simply lack the courage to restrain the state. Too many clueless people.
Progressivism has failed. You just don’t realize it yet.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:42 PM
Rein in the state, I should have written…..
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:43 PM
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 5:15 PM
All of this is fine? Compared to what – compared to Bangladesh, a state of nature, oligarchy, civil war, a chaotic and helter-skelter process of political and economic self-disfurement, and just about anything else that’s ever existed, yeah, it’s pretty good. Compared to a rational re-assessment of commitments under restored trust and popular sovereignty, not so fine.
The question is “choke-collared into submission” to whom and how. An ant-like state next to elephantine economic and military power on a global scale is a formula for complete submission, and the end of popular government. Ditto for a paralyzed or dismembered or strife-torn state. I could accept a lot of turbulence and cleavering and re-arrangement under certain circumstances, but what I’d accept and what the public would accept may not be the same thing. The more convinced the public is that conservatives have their best interests at heart and aren’t wild ideologues putting abstract notions of ideal government over the real needs, interests, and solemnly established expectations of real people, the better chance that an authentically conservative improvement of the situation and prospects can be achieved.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 6:04 PM
First you claim it’s mere “criticism”, while simultaneously labeling them in much the same way the mainstream media labels conservatives, tea partiers, etc. Love the “if you’re not ripping on each, you’re mutually admiring each other” argument. Classic all or nothing.
Doesn’t change the fact that in multiple articles you’ve affected an air of superiority and expressed snooty contempt for the people who post here. How apposite that you take a moment to defend people like Frum and Brooks while simultaneously ripping Beck. You speak with the same air of disdain that they regularly employ.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 6:16 PM
Well, as a rule, government has a monopoly on political power. Again, it could be that government misuses anti-trust laws. That is bad. But the idea behind anti-trust legislation is not choosing one monopolist over another. It is addressing a well known market failure. Nothing wrong in admitting that.
Aquateen Hungerforce on May 16, 2010 at 6:42 PM
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 6:16 PM
So, you can’t show how my descriptions or assessments are wrong: You simply castigate me for having opinions that, in your mind, are the same as those you’ve heard in the mainstream media, or similar to ones you’ve heard from other people who offend your self-regard. That’s debating, it’s just a form of ad hominem – and petulance, on the logic of “media:bad, media:anti-Beck,” “CKM:anti-Beck” ergo “CKM:bad” Bad CKM! Who cares?
You go on and on with your tender feelings about the “air of superiority” and “snooty contempt” you detect, completely unconcerned with your own presumed superiority and the contempt you indulge in.
So, in the end, anything’s OK, as long as it comes from someone you agree with or from yourself, nothing is offensive as long as it comes from someone you agree with or from yourself, anything that is said by someone you don’t like, or in a way that you don’t like, is prima facie unworthy of consideration, and you have nothing to say about the content of any particular argument.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 6:45 PM
That’s just criticism of your style, sir. It appears you can dish it out, but can’t take it yourself. How is it that pointing out your generalizations and labeling of the HA community with the same type of loaded terminology is somehow “ad hominem”…but the generalizations and labeling aren’t?
What a delicious strawman, and chock full of irony. I’m not addressing your argument, I’m addressing your secondary messages that you deliver in your articles. Passive-aggressive snipes at the community you take part in. This is something we’ve discussed before, and in my opinion it’s gotten worse. Hence my comparison of you to the likes of Frum and Brooks…two elitists notorious for their blanket characterizations of the conservative movement as somehow fringe or extreme because of their refusal to chime in with moderates. Your pieces on Wilson and the definition of “progressivism” do them great homage.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 6:59 PM
You’ve got it wrong. I just don’t care. Why should I? Am I supposed to think it’s my welfare or the success of my argument that causes you concern? Why should I care if “it’s gotten worse” in your august opinion? What if I did offer “secondary messages” and “passive-aggressive snipes at the community [I] take part in”? I think it’s a mischaracterization based on reflexive discomfort with people who happen to disagree with you, but even if it was an accurate description, what difference does it make in anyone’s life? Give some examples. Compare them to actual points I have made about civility rather than to your abstract definitions and your presumptions. Someday, you might even tie them into the main argument. (I won’t hold my breath, but I won’t exclude it form the realm of possibility.) Why should I or anyone care whether my pieces have anything to do with Brooks and Frum? What central committee declared all arguments that in any way overlap with or resemble arguments of Brooks’ or Frum’s are not to be allowed? It’s just more presumptuous non-argumentation. It’s all just over and over “I, MadisonConservative – whoever or whatever that is – don’t like it and you should care.” What makes YOU better than Brooks and Frum? At least Brooks and Frum know how to put two arguments from the real world together that have something to do with anything other than their trivial hurt feelings.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 8:06 PM
The more convinced the public is that conservatives have their best interests at heart and aren’t wild ideologues putting abstract notions of ideal government over the real needs, interests, and solemnly established expectations of real people, the better chance that an authentically conservative improvement of the situation and prospects can be achieved.
Sorry, the public is about to get hit by the meteor of insolvency and what they “Will accept” will not matter much after that.
The public better understand pretty fast that their “needs, interests, and solemn expectations” (I notice you really go crazy with the subjectives all the time, treating them as Articles of the Constitution when they are not) better get trimmed post haste, or we are going to be the next Weimar.
There is really only one way to do this and preserve human liberty, and progressivism ain’t it.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 8:14 PM
And now we’re shilling for Brooks and Frum. Supporters of Government healthcare and elitist to the core.
How progressive of you, indeed.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 8:20 PM
You never cease with the strawmans. I’ve never said you should care. I’m making my opinion known, and you’re free to disregard it as you choose. You seem to be real sore about that.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 8:28 PM
Finally, I’ll offer my firmly held conviction that if the vast majority of Americans, excepting the elderly and disabled, cannot rely upon themselves to fulfill their own “needs, interests, and solemn expectations”, then the American experiment will have bloody well failed and we can all agree Castro was right after all, not that we’ll be any better for it.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 8:28 PM
cannot rely upon themselves to fulfill their own “needs, interests, and solemn expectations”
I should have said “…cannot rely upon themselves, and their families, churches, local communities and state governments to fulfill their own “needs, interests, and solemn expectations”…..
Then we are baked in a rather unpleasant pie.
enforce the existing immigration laws
repeal Obamacare
repudiate cap and trade
commit to no further tax hikes
across the board spending cuts to come in line with revenues.
Then we’ll discuss the rest of it.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 8:34 PM
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 8:28 PM
Whatever. If you want to play the troll, go ahead. Presume my lack of interest. The day you make a comment that has anything to do with anything, I’ll reply.
Bit of a disconnect between the above and “Weimar!… Every man for himself!” Welcome to the the Progressive States of America, comrade. We appreciate your support.
As for fulfilling one’s own needs, that went out around 150 years ago, to the extent it was still true for many on a material level. It worked when the continent was expected to support around 1/20th of its current population.
As for expectations, I think if the government makes a commitment – that is, if we the people agree upon a solemn commitment among ourselves by legitimate and constitutional processes – then we should strive to live up to it until we the people cancel it by legitimate and constitutional means. I guess you don’t?
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 9:05 PM
It suddenly becomes clear why you defend Brooks and Frum. Kindred spirits.
MadisonConservative on May 16, 2010 at 9:26 PM
I’m well aware of the fact that you like to substitute your feelings about people for discussion of ideas. It’s less clear to me why you would be proud to advertise the inclination, which is, indeed, very un-progressive of you – among other things.
IIRC you were proposing joint efforts to oppose the heretic and thought-criminal CK MacLeod some months ago. Yet here you are.
CK MacLeod on May 16, 2010 at 9:27 PM
Bit of a disconnect between the above and “Weimar!
Why? Suicidal redistributionism and the resultant money printing got them there, only a fool would believe it wouldn’t happen to us.
We have been lucky, so far, but in our determination to see luck as invulnerability, we skate ever nearer the abyss.
As for fulfilling one’s own needs, that went out around 150 years ago, to the extent it was still true for many on a material level. It worked when the continent was expected to support around 1/20th of its current population.
A statement so astonishing and outlandish Bob Bennett could have made it. Oh wait, he did. Something about the USCon being an outdated doc for an agrarian society.
Thanks for laying it all out there for us.
As for expectations, I think if the government makes a commitment – that is, if we the people agree upon a solemn commitment among ourselves by legitimate and constitutional processes – then we should strive to live up to it until we the people cancel it by legitimate and constitutional means. I guess you don’t?
This is your way of saying you never want these programs to end, and you want my tax to go up. Redistributionist to the core eh? You assume, probably correctly, that the people will never tire of voting themselves money from the public treasury. Wonderfully noble sentiment and one our founders would cherish I’m sure.
So be it, but what you lack the strength to do, gravity may do for you and soon. There’s not enough money in the world to meet these commitments, hell there’s not enough paper to print the bills.
Events dear boy, events shall overtake your progressive universe.
Oh one more thing about the Germans getting their welfare checks while the roofs were coming off their homes:
Hint: It’s not a good thing, it’s a big part of why they lost. The Russians accepted the reality and constraints of their situation and adapted to it. The Germans kept right on running the trains on time as if it mattered.
Little windows to the soul. You are more like them than you care to let on.
rightwingyahooo on May 16, 2010 at 10:50 PM
Pro-capitalists on the right need to realize that anti-trust laws are progressive era junk. They are not “pro-competition” at all.
Here are some good links:
mises.org/books/antitrust.pdf
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2894
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765802821/cspanA
this last is a good set of essays on the topic
AshleyTKing on May 16, 2010 at 11:48 PM
They’re so good, they can even distribute cash they don’t have!
Abby Adams on May 17, 2010 at 10:18 AM
And only a blowhard would keep on switching between “bring back the 1830s, we’re all doomed, doomed!” and “stop cap and trade!” If we’re all doomed, doomed, who cares about cap and trade? So now you’ve worked it out in your mind that CKM = David Brooks and David Brooks = Nazi, therefore…. Odd how the only people who escape the chain of paranoid equivalences are certain rightwing yahoos, ones like the people over on that Jazz Shaw thread, proposing “war” on the “anti-Americans.” If you believed half of what you said, you’d be staying away from Zionist Occupation Government-surveilled web sites like this one, checking your kids for CIA microchips, and sharpening the bungee sticks around your cabin.
CK MacLeod on May 17, 2010 at 12:21 PM
It is distributed, therefore it is.
CK MacLeod on May 17, 2010 at 12:31 PM
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