No Ideas vs. No Guts

The Washington Post has two thought provoking pieces on the state of the conservative movement. Steven F. Hayward's "Is Conservatism Brain Dead?" asks if the movement has lost the equilibrium between populist rabble-rousers and intellectuals. Stephen Stromberg, in his PostPartisan Blog post "Palin 'Catastrophic' for GOP?", (besides making a compelling case that Palin is exactly that) references a Micheal Gerson piece which conceded that many Republicans are hostile "to the very idea of ideas". These are conservatives saying these things, mind you (well, I don't know about Stromberg, but he doesn't seem excited about a Republican self-immolation). One the other hand, I'm watching the Democrats cow-tow to this notion that this is a center-right nation. Um, didn't we elect a liberal to the White House? Isn't that a pretty reliable poll of political opinion? Obama certainly isn't as liberal as the far right would like to make him out to be (or as liberals like me would like him to be), but he's center-left. Why can't the Dems, when confronted by an opposition party that acknowledges its own intellectual bankruptcy, behave like they have a mandate to enact the changes the majority of Americans want? I have to think it's due to a lack of courage. So that's where we're at: No Ideas vs. No Guts.

Hayward recounts G.K. Chesterton's line about how "it is the business of progressives to go on making mistakes, while it is the business of conservatives to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." As a liberal, I'm perfectly willing to admit that the risk of progressivism is that a willingness to embrace change includes a willingness to make mistakes. The more dramatic the change, the more frightening the possibility that the change is a dangerous error. But we believe that the alternative, an aversion to change and a kind of conscious mythologizing of the past, leads to an even more dangerous regressivism. This is a genuine debate, with people of intelligence and goodwill on both sides, and liberals and conservatives have to continually weigh not only specific policies, but how much change they are willing to fight for, and how much they are willing to fight against.

But it seems both this country's political parties are actively avoiding this debate. It makes me wonder, how does fomenting outrage help the cause of conservatism, in the long run? In the short run, it gets ratings for your show on Fox News or AM radio, and it may even get you on the cover of Time Magazine, but people who've been whipped into a frothing rage about the state of the country generally won't appreciate the central drive of conservatism: To conserve the status quo. I think one of the reasons President Carter's latest remarks about the recism directed at President Obama struck such a cord was not because the prominent voices in conservatism are racists, but because those very leaders have good cause to be worried about their strategy: If you tell people the lie that we need to go backwards to the halcyon days of "family values", beyond the sound bite there's not a lot of substance. Go back to the days when a man could get away with beating his wife and children? Go back to the days when a woman couldn't vote? Go back to the days when taxes were higher (like they were under Reagan)? Go back to the days when politicians observed more civility than Joe Wilson? What past are they directing us to? I think those leaders, regardless of their own mixed feelings about the mechanisms we've put in place to achieve full civil rights for ethnic minorities, have reason to be concerned that too many conservatives might fill in the blanks by saying we should go back to the days when white men had first crack at jobs, more authority in their own households, more faces on TV, etc. Conservatives don't want to hold on to this present, when they are out of power and people are disenchanted. But how can they be conservatives without clearly articulating what to conserve?

On the flip side, liberals in the Democratic party are loathe to encourage real change because, let's face it, they're doing pretty well sitting right where they are. Why risk the presidency and two houses of Congress by enacting real change? What if you get it wrong? What if you create a situation where conservatives can say "let's go back to the moment before that blunder". The status quo, that of the majority desiring to change the status quo, serves the party identified with changing the status quo. As long as they don't actually do it. Of course, it's even easier to be a status-quo-maintaining faux-progressive when the conservatives are intellectually bankrupt.

Political pundits like to talk about the benefits of "gridlock". I think the term is misleading. There are benefits to "gridiron", as in the situation when conservatives and liberals put on their helmets, line up, and play some smash-mouth political football. Progressives move the ball while their ideas are good, but they are slowed down, made more calculating and deliberate. And if they err too greatly they turn the ball over and we move back down the field a bit. The political arc of this supposedly "center-right" nation has been liberal in the long-term. The progressives keep scoring (abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights). But "gridiron" politics has made the game exciting, and almost always kept the teams on the field. What we have now really is "gridlock", in the sense of traffic: Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have clogged the freeway and slowed each other to a near standstill, but they are headed in the same direction. I fear this freeway does not head to the best of our past or the promise of our future, but to something worse. I don't want to be an alarmist or some prophet of doom, but whether the American experiment ends tomorrow or in a hundred years, and whether it ends in fire or ice, the current concoction of gridlock is a recipe for disaster.

Of course, as a liberal, first and foremost I want the Democrats to gird their loins, grit their teeth, and make some change. But I also want the Republicans to identify the values they want to preserve and pick coherent and productive strategies to defend the best of our past. I've never been so concerned with the health of the opposition before, but I'm realizing just how essential real conservatism is for the health of the country. And to progress.

Conservative Response to Obama's Education Speech

I've just read the speech our president plans to give to grade school children on Tueasday. Much hay has been made of this, despite the fact that Ronald Reagan and George Bush I did the same thing, because, as we all know, Obama is a socialist with an insidious agenda. Conservatives, the sole possessors of moral values, are protecting our children from their president just as they protect them from health insurance: It's a gateway drug to socialism too, after all. As a teacher and concerned citizen, I think it's very important that we have a robust two-party system, so that the other side can offer well-reasoned responses on any issue, so that we tack a wise course as a nation. And I expect that we'll hear thoughtful, rational responses from the far-right over the next few days as they respond to Obama's outrageous misuse of his bully pulpit. Just as an exercise, let's see if we can predict what some of those might be, shall we?

Obama will tell kids, "...at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed."

Certainly this is socialist propaganda, somehow. The fault of all our public schools (which, conservatives will tell us, are universally failing) lies with teachers unions alone. All kids show up thirsty for knowledge, but evil teachers sit on their fat, tenured backsides and enjoy their HUGE, union negotiated paychecks while these eager students languish in our care. Obama must just be trying to shift the blame away from the unions, which are essentially socialist enterprises.

Obama will also tell kids, "You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy."

How could these things all go together? After all, curing AIDS would just be undermining God's righteous judgment on the immoral. And protecting the environment? We all know global warming is a myth, so what is the problem to solve there? And why should students with homes care about helping the homeless? Poor people aren't victims. They're just lazy people who couldn't figure out how to be welfare queens and live in mansions with Cadillacs. Let's focus our kids on the problem of making those welfare queens poorer, rather than helping homeless people, who are getting just what they deserve. And how can Obama talk about boosting the economy when he just mentioned helping the environment? The two are mutually exclusive. Instead, let's teach the kids to more effectively rape... er, harvest the planet's natural resources. In fact, let's tell the kids to run out of school on the first day and get jobs down in the mines. Child labor laws, after all, were part of Roosevelt's socialist agenda.

Obama will continue: "But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying."

This is crazy talk. Circumstances justify bad attitudes. If you are white, male, and well off, then you are a victim of classism, feminism, and reverse racism, and you have every right to go on Fox News or am radio and rail against the injustice in the system which has kept you down. Forget homework! That's like fact-checking. Just make stuff up as you go, and people will be so entertained your bad attitude that the namby-pamby liberals won't even have a chance to keep up with your lies... er, inaccuracies and misstatements. And what's this about trying hard? Do you think Bill O'Reilly tries hard to be a journalist? He spends more time on his hair, and he's doing just fine.

Obama: "Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community."

Translation: March with hippies, or join the communist party.

Obama: "No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work."

This is just more liberal, pro-choice fetus bashing. See, he's calling the unborn incompetent.

Obama will conclude, "So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it."

I'm not quite sure how, but I think this is a subtle encouragement for kids to form death-panels and try to kill their grandmothers. It must be, because Obama is the one saying it.

So please, rescue your kids. Save them, and this country, from its president's evil socialist agenda. Keep them home for the day (maybe even a week just to make sure). Their over-paid, under-worked, union protected teachers would love an extra day to plan the communist take-over of America... or at least a few extra lessons on critical thinking.

God bless you, Al Sharpton!

Al Sharpton spoke out against Prop 8 at he Human Rights Ecumenical Service in Atlanta on Sunday. Check this out! He said:

"There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you."

Furthermore, "It amazes me," he said, "when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners."

"I am tired," he went on, "of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they're preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade...We know you're not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you. We would have heard from you when people were starving in California--when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [accused Ponzi scammer] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren't there you had nothing to say."

"[Social conservatives] will start with the gays but they will end with everybody else," he said. "If you give the Pat Robertsons of the world the theological right to condemn some, then you give them the right to condemn others."

Amen, Al, and thank you for giving me a bit of renewed faith in American Christianity.