A Serious Question

One of the newest conservative talking points I've heard from various right-wing pundits is that, despite their landslide electoral losses, this is still a "center-right country". At the same time, a fellow named Wakefield Tolbert has been carrying on something of an argument with @bdul muHib on the comments section of the post about homeschooling. I say "something of an argument" because it's very difficult to track what exactly Wakefield is talking about. I challenge someone to summarize his arguments for him into some concise, coherent form. Anyway, when challenged about the impenetrability of his writing he dismissed @bdul and myself by associating us with the "liberal chimpanzees" over at Slate.com. I will freely admit to being a liberal, and this isn't the first time my opinions have been wholly discounted for it, but in the context of this new talking point about this being a center-right country, I want to know what "liberal" means to conservatives, what conservatism means in the wake of the Bush presidency, and where this notion of center-right comes from.

This is a genuine question. Bill Bishop, in his excellent blog during the election titled "The Big Sort", explained very convincingly that we choose our politics as a consequence of our lifestyles, and, more and more, we are moving to live near people like us; hence the political and geographical polarization in our country. Bishop referenced some study that showed that conservatives are better at understanding where liberals are coming from than vice-versa. At first I frowned at that. We're liberals. We're touchy-feely. We like to understand other points of view. So how is it we can't understand our conservative neighbors as well as they understand us? But the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that it's true, at least in my case. I just can't wrap my mind around the apparent contradictions I see coming from the conservative side, and I fail to see those same contradictions on my own side of the fence. So I'm asking for help.

To keep things relatively simple, let's see if we can even agree on definitions. Conservatives, going back to Buckley, figured out that they needed to distill their vision down to ten words. Those were:

Strong Defense
Free Markets
Lower Taxes
Smaller Government
Family Values

George Lakoff proposed these ten words as the progressive values:

Stronger America
Broad Prosperity
Better Future
Effective Government
Mutual Responsibility

I think those are both pretty decent summaries of the values upon which conservatives and liberals base their policy proposals, but I'm sure we could quibble about the wording, and I'd have no problem with that, because these small, nuance difference have huge consequences. Think this is just semantics? Think about the difference in opinion when you ask people what they think about estate taxes on the wealthy vs. death taxes on business owners. Or torture vs. enhanced interrogation techniques.

When I look at the list of values, I can see why liberals like me are so pissed off at Bush. He has not made America stronger in the world by any measure. Prosperity has grown only among the tiniest sliver at the top. Our future looks much bleaker than it did eight years ago. Our government has proven itself to be woefully incompetent on a number of fronts. And some Americans are paying very heavy tolls for all Bush's mistakes (too many have paid the ultimate price) while others have only been asked to do a bit more shopping. For a liberal, his record is dismal.

But how do conservatives see it? Bush, according to every military expert I've read, has stretched our military to the breaking point, all the while ratcheting up our need for military strength in the world, making us that much more vulnerable. His emphasis on free markets not only showed the dangers of deregulation, but then he abandoned those principles to bail out the banking industry. He lowered taxes on the wealthy, but did so while growing the federal deficit to such a degree that it's not really a tax cut but a differed tax increase on the next generation that will put every tax increase ever proposed by any other president to shame by comparison. He created the single largest bureaucracy in the history of the federal government in the form of Homeland Security, and oversaw that greatest expansion in the size of the federal government of any president. He appears to have stuck to his guns on issues of family values, but this has shown in stark relief that these family values are focused almost exclusively on limiting gay rights and protecting the unborn: Even Bush's greatest accomplishment in office, his increase in aid to Africa, is mitigated by the fact that he stipulated that none of the money could go to clinics which provided abortion or even contraception. For those of us who think decisions like these are best made between a woman, her doctor, and her God, Bush's insertion of his own agenda into women's health decisions in the third world means his definition of family values is very... focused. Add to this an elective war where as many as a million Americans and Iraqis have died, a million members of families lost in a war that didn't need to happen, and this definition of family values strikes us liberals as completely vacuous. But what do conservatives think?

And here's the thing; while the conservative talking heads keep saying this is a center-right country, on almost every issue I can think of, the polling data doesn't back them up. Most Americans believe a woman should have a right to make her own reproductive health choices. Most Americans think this war was wrong. Most Americans think the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina showed them to be inept. Most Americans think that the government should be doing more to help people suffering during this economic downturn (pro-Broad Prosperity) but are infuriated by the way it bailed out Wall Street (showing they're also pro-Free Markets, with limits). Most Americans want their government to provide more oversight of the financial sector.

Jon Stewart challenged a conservative guest on just this point (I think it was Mike Huckabee), arguing that the history of the United States has been one of slow but inexorable progress away from bigotry and aristocracy toward pluralism and inclusiveness. When conservatives say this is still a center-right country, are they just referencing our tendency to move toward social progress at a very slow pace? If so, then isn't conservatism just associating itself with every kind of prejudice and backward attitude we've had to struggle so hard to put behind us? What am I not seeing which will help me understand conservatism?

And what is it I don't see about liberalism which dictates that a conservative can apply that label to me and dismiss everything I have to say? What can a conservative see, that I can't, which would explain such antipathy toward liberalism?

Watching the Conservative Crackup from the Left Side of the Colosseum

I pick on conservatives a lot here, and with voices out there like Michael Gerson and Bill Kristol, why not? But, in the spirit of President-elect Obama's new politics, I want to give credit to a conservative who wrote a great line as part of an exchange on Slate about the new direction of conservatism, the Conservative Crackup.

A bit of summary: Douglas Kmiec wrote a letter saying, among other things, that the Obama campaign had better ideas about abortion, avoiding the traditional pro-life tactic to talk about judges and talking about how to lower abortion rates. He proposed that anti-abortion activists seek legislation which would seek to establish that life begins at conception while prohibiting the criminalization of women's choice. Anyone, even a pro-choice believer like me, could see this was not only going to frustrate those who are pro-life, but it would also create a bizarre and illogical situation protecting the act of killing a person established as such in law. Weird.

Then Ross Douthat wrote a response attacked Kmeik for not offering enough to pro-life voters with these ideas, and for implying a bizarre attempt at compromise would offer nothing to the pro-lifers. He wrote, "I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term 'useful idiot' was coined, rather than persisting in his folly." For those of us on the left interested in some schadenfreude, reading conservatives, famous for their unity, call each other names the way Democrats have during their time in the wilderness is like driving a Ferrari filled with adoring super-models to a fully functional amusement park made of candy.

But it gets better. Kmiec replies with a revolting letter that was probably written inside a card purchased at a particularly tacky Christian gift store with a picture on the front depicting Jesus juggling Anne Geddes babies dressed in assorted produce. "Genuine love and affection do not reside on the Internet, so I cannot extend it to you, but in my heart, I forgive your great unkindness." Wait, hold that vomit in your throat. "Ross, you are not ordinary in God's eyes; nor are the women facing abortion as a tragic answer to a dismal, impoverished, and near-hopeless existence. Ross, you and she are brother and sister made in God's image and are expected to be of help to one another. That is a lesson for the Republicans." Okay, you can let it tickle your uvula, but don't toss your cookies quite yet. "If I have offended you in some way, I ask your forgiveness. For we remember, in the reminder from Benedict XVI, St. Paul admonished Christians to be reconciled with their brothers before receiving Holy Communion..." Okay, aim carefully and let fly.

No here's where I want to give some props to a conservative. After a couple hours I can only imagine as an uncomfortable silence filled with grimacing and sideways glances, Tucker Carlson, the one who ties his disdain for liberals like me in a bow-tie and maintains his party orthodoxy with his Goldwater '64 souvenir stick-up-the-tookas, responded to Kmiec: "Hey, Doug. Toughen up. Seriously. I've read suicide notes that were less passive-aggressive than this." I love that last line. In a spirit of bipartisanship I plan on quoting it at every opportunity.

But Tucker can't stay on my good side for more than ten lines. He continues, "I understand it must have hurt when Ross accused you of shilling for Obama. On the other hand, he's right. You did shill for Obama. That's not Ross' fault. Don't blame him. But if you are going to blame him, do it directly, like a man, without all the encounter-group talk and Pope quotes. People often attack the religious right, sometimes with justification. But as you just reminded us, there is nothing in the world more annoying than the religious left."

But here's the thing: Kmieck is a conservative legal scholar who took over a position previously held by Antonin Scalia, and served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush I. Carlson wishes he had those kind of conservative bona fides. Kmieck did shill for Obama, but he's far from the religious left, and the religious left doesn't sound like that. Carlson is calling him left because "left" is Carlson's idea of a swear word, the same way we use "Coulter" in my household.

Chastened, Kmiec returns to a less WWJD tone, though he addresses himself to someone other than Douthat or Carlson. He concludes, "One needs a philosophy of governance in addition to honoring the constitutional structure. Barack Obama's philosophy of government provides service for needs unmet by the market. And the Republicans' philosophy?"

I would refer Kmiec to a passage from an earlier post by Jim Manzi: "Any real-world government requires taxes. The people who have a lot of money will end up paying a share of these taxes disproportionate to their numbers under any nontyrannical regime. Further, any just real-world government will have at least some poor relief, by whatever name, for those unable to care for themselves. Therefore, at least some mild redistribution will be an incidental byproduct of a just and well-functioning government. Accepting these practical realities is very different from actual advocacy of redistribution as good in and of itself." Now this is a kind of honesty that one hasn't found in conservatism for years. It's much easier to shout "Socialist!" than to explain this nuanced view of taxation. But this is far more persuasive, even to a liberal like me. I'm no Maoist. I just don't think a great country lets any of its people die in its streets. I certainly can't answer Kmiec's larger philosophical question for conservatives, but I can give him some helpful advice: Find somebody with the courage to stand up to the anti-intellectual wing of the Republican Party (a pro-intelligence maverick) who can explain this distinction between redistribution for the sake of social justice rather than redistribution as its own ideological imperative, and your party will do a lot better in 2012.

Of course, if you want to spend the next 4 years calling each other fools and useful idiots, then responding with the kind of passive-aggressive-ism found in suicide notes, those of us on the Christian left would just love it.

As Pope Sanctimonius the XXXVII said, "Bring me some lawyers, think-tank wonks, and a guy in a bow-tie. Throw 'em in a pit and tell 'em only one gets out alive. I like watching their slap-fights."