Black Eddie's Open Salon Blog

Bipartisan Baloney and the Problem of Evil, Part II

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:01:47 -0500

Calls for moderation and civility in the public debate are a perennial feature of American politics. They are usually accompanied by an exhortation to lawmakers to adopt a generous spirit of bipartisanship in the effort to address the nation's problems. This seems to assume that the serious ideological differences between the Left and the Right can be overcome by an outbreak of good sportsmanship. They cannot. They are based in fundamentally irreconcilable moral philosophies.

The conflict arises in a disagreement over what is evil and what is good. Republicans have done a superb job of claiming the mantle of goodness, while painting their adversaries on the Left as wicked scoundrels. Their often invocation of "values" is to be understood as an appeal to universally recognized and binding moral principles, established in the Bible, presumably endorsed by the Founders, and now perversely repudiated by subversive liberals.

Progressives have been put at disadvantage in this contest, largely by a temperamental disinclination to couch our arguments in moralistic terms. Committed to secularism and the separation of church and state, we tend to avoid biblical citations, preferring to speak in terms of fairness, equality, justice, and human rights, as if these were, in the words of the Founders, self-evident. Nevertheless, there is no reason not to allude to the the scriptural source. It is for us a common cultural heritage, informing all our ethical calculations - questions of right and wrong, of morality and immorality, of good and evil.

The second table of the Decalogue provides a concise summation of moral evil that even atheists should be able to accept. We are enjoined not to commit murder, theft and slander, among other evils. Clearly, anyone who refrains from such transgressions can be thought good, though he drink, smoke, gamble and cuss.

The fifth and eighth commandments (do not murder; do not lie, respectively), however, are not at issue in American politics. Nobody could seriously object to them. The sixth (do not philander) and the ninth (don't even think of it), and the various sexual mores derived therefrom do figure prominently in our debates, but they should not. The censoriousness of the right wing in such matters bespeaks an unhealthy preoccupation with other people's personal affairs - to say nothing of the deadly snare of hypocrisy into which so many public scolds have fallen to their ruination.

That leaves only two: do not steal and do not covet. Political disputes, whatever else they may be, are ultimately about money. The ideological divide between liberals and conservatives consists in differing interpretations of these moral imperatives.

A basic tenet of leftist political theory is that wide income disparity is a threat to democracy. Economic inequality equals social inequality. Such asymmetries are perhaps inevitable, but government has a duty to mitigate them so that they do not result in unequal power relationships among citizens. When they do, when the rich exploit their position in order to skew the benefits of society disproportionately in their favor at the expense of the common good, it amounts to theft.

Furthermore, a civilized society has an obligation to all its members, and especially the poorest, to ensure that they are not deprived of the necessities of life. It is a question of human rights. To ignore this responsibility amounts to theft. President Eisenhower, not a particularly observant Christian, adroitly invoked St. Matthew 25:42 in speaking of the economic distortions of bloated military expenditure. He remarked that it "signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," (emphasis added). Liberals view social inequities as evil, and those who have a vested interest in perpetuating them as likewise evil.

To conservatives the above discussion smacks of nothing so much as socialism, and socialism is evil. The terms are synonymous in the right-wing lexicon. The libertarian economist, Walter E. Williams, offers an explanation of conservative antipathy to the welfare state, protesting that, "(T)he federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft...This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion...to accomplish good ends, helping one's fellow man...No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice, ...a sin in the eyes of God," (emphasis added).

Conservative philosophy (at least in its contemporary form) will not admit of any government authority to impose taxes upon citizens to accomplish its legitimate purposes, because government has no legitimate purposes. Taxation, therefore, is theft. It is doubly evil because, in punishing the industrious, it encourages and rewards the covetousness of the indolent, undeserving lower classes. The thinly disguised racism and snobbery of this outlook are obvious.

It should also be obvious that politicians holding such antithetical moral positions cannot find common ground. The rancorous political climate of our times is grounded in diametrically opposed agendas. Talk of bipartisanship rings suspiciously disingenuous in such an environment. Right-wing activist Grover Norquist has stated, "We are trying to change the tones...toward bitter nastiness and partisanship. Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

President Obama seems naive when he seeks compromise with these people. He surely knows that their whole aim is to undo him. He represents to them only an impediment to their long-standing goal: the thorough dismantling of government's power to regulate corporate capitalism. That aim has guided conservative philosophy since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, energizing the opposition to the New Deal of President F. D. Roosevelt, and later to President Johnson's Great Society. It is the heart of the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's.

International capitalists have long known that the only power on earth capable of preventing them from ruling the world was the US government. They therefore set themselves the task of buying it out. They have nearly succeeded. So close to realizing their ambitions, they will not abandon them now, not without a determined struggle.

That is the source of the bad blood between Democrats and Republicans. Genuine bipartisanship cannot obtain under such circumstances

Bipartisan Baloney and the Problem of Evil, Part I

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:01:14 -0500

It should be no surprise that the horror of last weekend's attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords would be seized by partisans of both sides, but especially by the Left, as a political opportunity. Liberals, lately much beleaguered, cannot resist the chance to fling heinous accusations into the teeth of their antagonists. Never mind that making a direct causal connection between the odious rants of clods like Rush Limbaugh and the murderous rampage of a lunatic is to commit a post hoc fallacy of the first rank.

Right-wingers, for their part, are no slouches at this game either. They are quite able to give as good as they get. The unabashed Mr. Limbaugh took to the airwaves soon after the shooting to declare that Democrats had secretly been hoping for just such an incident so that they could use the occasion to discredit conservatives. Of course he would say that; he had to say something. He has an obligation to his listeners to level relentless criticism at the Left even if he must resort to outrageous fabrications. But he could not seriously propose that the miscreant had been driven to the deed by listening to Rachel Maddow.

In the present instance it is not the Left that has disgraced itself by infecting the political debate with violent rhetoric. Keith Olbermann, surely the most acerbic of the cable-news liberals, does not hesitate to denounce these reactionaries as idiots or worse. But it cannot be overlooked that Mr. Olbermann and his cohort have not titillated their listeners with evocations of violence. Nowadays that bit of dirty politics has been the sole province of the Right.

It is telling that right-wing demagogues have been quick to disavow and remove provocative hyperbole from their tweets, blogs and websites. The defensive posture adopted by their apologists bewrays a certain uneasiness, as if to acknowledge belatedly that hateful speech can indeed have ugly consequences, as Ms. Giffords herself has pointed out. We really should take Sarah Palin at her word when she maintains, however lamely, that she meant no harm by posting the gunsight map of congressional districts or by exhorting her supporters to "reload." But the lady doth protest too much. It is not unreasonable to demand to know what exactly she did mean. What exactly did the also-ran Jesse Kelly mean when he invited disgruntled Tucsonans to fire a "fully automatic M-16" while in the same breath he spoke of "eliminating" Gabrielle Giffords? What exactly did Sharon Angle mean when she muttered ominously of taking up "Second Amendment remedies" if the people were dissatisfied with the Congress? What exactly does Michelle Bachman mean when she entertains a hope that her partisans be "armed and dangerous?" Some of those expressions, Ms. Angle's in particular, skirt a line very near to sedition.

What they would appear to be doing is appealing to a romantic fantasy of armed revolution. Decades ago it was the Left, incensed by racial inequality and an illegitimate war, that promoted this delusion; and hideous bloodshed did occasionally ensue. One need only remember crackpot factions such as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Conservatives of the time closed ranks in defense of the government, advancing such slogans as "America: Love It or Leave It," and "My Country, Right or Wrong."

Now it is conservatives, indignant at the social changes of the last half century, threatened by the growing power of minorities, dismayed by the ground shifting beneath their very feet, who adopt the same fantasy. And it is a fantasy. Now, as in the past, a sober assessment of the facts will lead to the conclusion that the very idea of armed overthrow of the US government is a fool's errand. Even if all citizens posessed assault weapons equipped with high-capacity clips, they would be hopelessly out-gunned and out-manned by the forces at the government's disposal. They could not possibly succeed.

This may explain the nervousness and partial retreat of the Right in this cicumstance. Even the most fervid tea-bagger knows that actual armed resistance is unrealistic, and their leaders likewise know that their militant rhetoric is only an appeal to base emotions.

What drives the acrimony is a conviction shared by the Right and the Left that our opponents are not simply mistaken and misguided, but outrightly evil. There can be no compromise because we are morally obliged not to collaborate with evil. Attempts to restore civility to the public discourse are futile while this view prevails. Meanwhile, President Obama will hope in vain for bipartisan cooperation in addressing the nation's problems. One cannot negotiate in good faith with an opponent who harbors evil aims.

(In the next post we shall attempt to understand how liberals view the conservative political philosophy as evil, and vice-versa.)

It Was (and still is) the Economy, Stupid

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:12:37 -0500

In both print and broadcast media, the post-mid-term-election analyses continue unabated. One foresees that they will persist until they gradually transform into debate about the presidential primaries sometime around next Halloween. Actually, the presidential campaign has already begun. In the United States of America nowadays the electioneering never stops.

It is entirely and appropriately predictable that commentators' opinions should cleave along party lines. In general they can be neatly summarized.

Republicans gloat triumphantly that American voters are naturally conservative, and have decisively rejected President Obama's repellent socialist designs. Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, who is what lately passes for a moderate centrist, opined in November that the people had voted against Mr. Obama's policies in "a fight over capitalism." Ms. Parker seems to have accepted uncritically the conservative notion that the president is in fact subversively opposed to American capitalism.

Democrats protest correctly that the president's achievement has been nothing short of forestalling a depression, and that his major shortcoming has simply been a failure to communicate. Timothy Egan writes in the New York Times that far from opposing capitalism, Mr. Obama has heroically saved it. He may be right. The banking crisis of 2008 might well have destroyed the world economy had quick remedial measures not been taken.

Both of these accounts are wide of the mark. President Obama is no socialist, outraged accusations from the Right notwithstanding. His despairing liberal critics could but wish that he were not so firmly committed to capitalism's perdurance. (If he had nationalized the banks, as was suggested in some quarters, that could be called socialism. Americans, as a rule, could not say what socialism is exactly except that it can't be good.)

The rolling disaster for Democrats is best explained by one simple fact: the economy is still in wretched condition. When unemployment stands at nearly ten percent nationwide and much higher in some states, voters will, rightly or wrongly, blame their incumbent leaders and display a vengeful urge to throw the bums out. Americans have reliably voted on pocketbook issues, not abstractions like socialism and capitalism. Mr. Obama's fortunes in 2012 can be confidently predicted by economic statistics. If the recession continues and if unemployment remains high, he will not be reelected.

Republicans: Regressive and Reactionary

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 19:11:24 -0400

The estimable Ambrose Bierce once defined a conservative as someone who is enamored of existing evils (as opposed to a liberal who wishes to replace them with others, but that is a topic for another time). We should add that a conservative is also enamored of previously existing evils and dearly hopes to reinstate them. That this is so is amply demonstrated by the stated policies of the present field of Republican candidates. The tea-baggers' rallying cry, "Taking Our Country Back," although inarticulate is likewise a plain indication of reaction.

Bill Clinton recently commented that the mid-term election is less a referendum on President Obama's agenda than it is "a choice between two different sets of ideas." Democrats, especially Mr. Obama, have been criticized for failing to present their ideas coherently and convincingly to the people. Republicans cannot be accused of such a deficiency. Their ambitions are ominously clear. They have made no attempt conceal their aspiration to undo all the progressive gains Americans have achieved since the New Deal.

Much of that program has aready been accomplished. The economic crisis of the last few years is largely a result of the steady, incremental dismantling of federal regulation of the financial sector that had been implemented in order to prevent just such an occurrence. Conservative politics since the mid twentieth century represent a sustained reaction against every social improvement that has occurred in our society. The unfettered monopolist capitalism and rigid class stratification of the Gilded Age is the preferred social model that Republicans would impose upon us if they could.

If that seems far-fetched, consider this: George W. Bush has lamented that his greatest failure as president was his inability to "reform" Social Security. He evinced no regret for his unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation that had not harmed us, and the appalling suffering that caused; nor did he make mention of his administration's culpably incompetent response to the catastrophic devastation of a great American city. No, for the former president the most imortant goal was to cut an essential lifeline benefitting all citizens.

Tea Bag candidates have almost universally expressed their intentions of privatizing (i.e. looting and then eliminating) Medicare and Social Security. Those two entitlement programs were vigorously opposed by Republicans when first introduced. They have since become sacred cows of American politics. It remains to be seen whether the consequences of threatening them will be now as it has been in the past an abrubt end to political careers.

Also on the block will be the hard-won equalities enjoyed by minorities, especially blacks. Rand Paul of Kentucky has infamously expressed his desire to repeal the Civil Rights act, calling it an unwarranted governmental intrusion on free enterprise. That, of course, was an argument originally advanced against it. Conservative opposition to racial equality has remained unchanged.

In short, Republicans will, if they can, fashion an American society that is characterised by gross economic disparities, where minorities are afforded distinctly inferior status, where education and proper health care are the appurtenances only of wealth and privilege, where the elderly and the helpless are left to shift for themselves, and ordinary working people have no power to better themselves.

That is the conservative set of ideas to which President Clinton referred. Anyone who disagrees with that vision of America should vote against any and all conservatives, and especially Republicans.

Arizona...Otra Vez

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:06:45 -0400

In New Mexico (USA) there is a saying: We don't have lunatic asylums here. We send the insane to Arizona where they get elected to public office.

The lunatics have definitely taken over the Arizona asylum. Screwball extremists have always been abundant in the state's politics. They seem to grow them there in rows next to the cotton bolls. Arizona is, after all, where one recent governor maintained that his enemies were spying on him electronically, so he kept the radio on in his office and at home "to keep the lasers out." The same governor appointed an advisor to the state Department of Public Instruction who held the declared opinion that, "if a student wants to say that the world is flat, the teacher does not have the right to prove otherwise." Arizona is where legislation proposing secession is introduced into the legislature every year. These bills have occasionally passed. Sober heads have thus far prevailed.

An ongoing controversy of more than ten years duration in that same august body has been the vexed question of legalizing sparklers, yes, sparklers, the kind that children play with on the 4th of July. It was finally settled last year when Governor Jan Brewer relented, and, rescinding a previous veto, permitted the things to be sold and used in Arizona. At the same time she signed a new law which enables anyone to bear arms in a tavern. This contravenes an ancient, sacred and eminently sensible custom. Until now one had always checked his weapon with the bartender upon entering a watering hole.

More recently the Arizona Legislature succumbed to the deepest psychosis in Amercan politics, passing a law, duly signed by the governor, which requires any candidate for the presidency of the United States to submit a birth certificate to the Secretary of State before being placed on the ballot in that benighted state. All of this Neronic fiddling occurs while the state faces the worst budget crisis in its history. Arizona teeters at the abyss while the sleek, well-paid, overfed pashas of government dither about inconsequentialities.

A steadfast and willful refusal to face reality is not insanity; it is a lesser mental affliction-neurosis. Insanity is a functional inability to distiguish the real from the delusional. The danger in neurosis lies in the tendency for habitual denial of unwelcome truth to become permanent, inducing full-blown madness. Arizona politicians and a great many of their constituents have been deluded by their prejudices. Governor Brewer is either as cuckoo as the rest of them, or, more likely, she is a simpleton, a willing patsy to the worst designs of truly malevolent people.

State Senator Russell Pearce, the sponsor of much of this travesty, is no madman and no fool. A nasty piece of work, Mr. Pearce has associations with White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis. He denies knowlege of their activities. When asked by a reporter if he was a racist, he denied it, as all racists do. He declaims an almost idolatruos respect for the rule of law, but is no stranger himself to legal troubles. In 1999 he was fired from his post as director of the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles for complicity in tampering with state driving records. Long before that he was accused of battery by his wife, to whom, poor woman, he remains married.

Since attaining his seat in the Arizona statehouse Mr Pearce has waged a single-minded quest to expel Spanish-speakers from the state. His latest ploy is a bill to refuse American citizenship to Mexican children born on this soil, in an outright flouting of the Constitution. Until the departure of Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano the bizarre excesses of Russell Pearce and his ilk were kept in check by executive vetoes. Now she is gone and the way is cleared for the ranting reactionaries of Arizona to implement their long-cherished ambitions.

Arizona, ¡Otra vez! Arizona, not again!