The notion of a pervasive constructed world of falsehood and illusion built on the fabrications of the press and the liberal establishment has long been central to the American far right.1 And since Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater before him, the knowledge that its supporters have their own truth, that they are forced to battle continually against an intensively propagandized false reality, has been a vital energizing trump of “movement” Republicans. It means that Republicans, whether in power or not, are always in opposition. Even when they hold the White House and Congress, still the great bulk of the news media in New York and Washington with its vaunted “objectivity”; the culture industry in New York and California with its Hollywood vulgarity and easy virtues; the permanent bureaucracy of unionized government employees and teachers with their sinecures and perks—all remain immovably liberal. Republicans, “in power” or not, are forced to struggle always to conquer false truth, and that constant struggle has been a source of great motivating mobilizing power, as we last saw during the town meetings against the health care bill in the summer of 2009 and the Tea Party electoral triumph that followed.
Of course occasionally into these great self-sustaining master narratives comes a rude interruption from something…real. (Mark Danner, NYRB)
I have a lot of respect for thoughtful, principled conservatives. I do truly understand where they are coming from. I share their diagnosis of the disease that infects American society, but not their prescription for a cure. There is no cure; there is only what might be described as disease management. And for that you need practical wisdom, which begins with accepting the world for the broken, fallen thing that it is, and do the best you can to muddle through without making things worse while we wait for some new impulse that will bring a cultural springtime to the dead land. In the meanwhile we must be disciplined about not surrendering to extreme solutions.
Wise conservatives understand this, and they don't look for simplistic solutions to complex historical/cultural realities. They understand that it's not about the triumph of one ideology over the other, but of finding a healthful balance between polarities that must be held in a dynamic tension. Movement conservatives err, IMO, in their embrace of an idelogy that throws things out of balance.They have come to see the government as this monstrous evil that must be severely restricted, and in their obsession with the evils of big government have become blind to the dangers presented to us all by huge private-sector warlords, predators that care not at all for the health of the whole but only of their own benefit.
There are many symptoms of this imbalance, but the most disturbing is the way so much wealth and power has aggregated into the hands of so few over the last thirty years. It didn't have to happen, and if we Americans had any sense, we would not have permitted it to happen.
A more healthful society is not one which is dominated by either corporate power or government power, but by both held in a dynamic balance. That requires a mixed economy, not the extremes of a command economy or a laissez-faire economy, but one that finds that recognizes the importance of having a government big enough (and accountable enough) that it can provide a sufficient counterbalance to the excesses of the market.
Are there times when the government has overreached? Yes. I think it could be argued that there was some of that in the 70s, but then the task was to redress the balance, not go to the other extreme. But to the other extreme we went. The Reaganism and Groverism of the last thirty years has been a movement to the other extreme, and to the degree that that extremism has infected movement conservatism it has led movement conservatives into a state of mind that is deeply out of touch with American cultural and economic reality as it exists on the ground.
Conservatives blame Liberals for all that ails American socieity, but liberals are not the cause of the destruction of the traditional values and mores that conservatives cherish. Industrial capitalism in the 19th century began their destruction, and consumer capitalism in the postwar period finished it. Liberals are simply those who have adapted to the new, non-traditional social reality given to us by the disruptions of capitalism.
I've argued repeatedly here that this adaptive response by Liberalism is inadequate to the challenge that lies before us, but at least it's a place to start. It's grounded in the world as it is. The best liberals are pragmatists, not idelogues. There is nothing pragmatic about movement conservatism.
Movement conservatives sincerely believe that the "real America" in their imaginations has some relationship to the America that actually exists, and that's the mistake that sooner or later, if they are to recover their sanity and play a truly constructive role in shaping our future, they must correct. They are right to resist adapting to the world given to us over the last two hundred years, but wrong to think their idea of what that world should look like in the 21st century has even the remotest possibility of being realized. Something else is called for.
Postscript: Just saw this at Front Porch Republic:
The Republicans have joined themselves to a corporate oligarchy that can never be conservative. The Fox Corporation may tout “family values” on its news channels, but it does everything it can to destroy them on its entertainment channels. The message is clear: values are good only to the point where they might interfere with profits; then they are to be abandoned, since profit is the final good. The irony is lost on Republicans but apparent to everyone else.
Another irony is that the Unintended Consequence of the Citizens United decision might be the destruction of the Republican Party. They are more dependent than ever on a corrupt corporate oligarchy, an oligarchy that is completely out of touch with the nation and incapable of ruling. As G. K. Chesterton put it, oligarchy is not a government; it is a riot, a riot of the rich. They cannot rule; they can only ruin. The Republican Party, having become intoxicated with this endless source of funds, can only stumble around and cannot find its way.
I would not, however, underestimate the ability of Big Money to find its way, if not through Republicans, then through Democrats.
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