Why I Love Bloggingheads
What a pleasure to hear David Frum and Brink Lindsey argue. They share the experience of being labeled heretics for their opinions, but listening to the sophistication of their arguments — grounded in principle, research, reason and long observation — it’s apparent that anyone who fails to glean wisdom from these men does himself a disservice. They also do an admirable job of disagreeing forcefully but with civility, and I can only assume that the BhTV format aided them. I know of no other venue where the exchanges play out quite like this.
i agree. these two are great. i think it is because though they disagree, the understand each other’s perspectives very well.
— Razib · Jun 11, 06:29 PM · #
Some things that I appreciate is a willingness not to take themselves too seriously, neither man is threatened about his own position being challenged, and neither is invested in attempting to demean the other. This allows space for an open discussion.
I believe that is the model you aim for, but I still would question attempting to critique another man’s livelihood.
— nicholas · Jun 11, 10:22 PM · #
For the last couple of years the internet has not been kind to how my wife and I make our living, and because of that I probably spend too much time focused on how many things technology has made shabbier.
But this is a wonderful and welcome reminder that the disintermediated dream is not dead. A simple idea, a direct approach, none of the lack of faith in the audience demonstrated by so many mainstream outlets.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 12, 01:15 AM · #
I beg to differ. I find both these men to be insufferable and lacking in any credibility, given the financial crisis in Lindsey’s case and the failure of the Iraq War in Frum’s case. Their snide and snobbish tut-tuting about the working class in Detroit was as vulgar and as ugly a display as I can remember seeing in public discourse in recent years. And Lindsey’s constant just-under-the-surface Christophobia has always grated on me, as has Frum’s pseudo-intellectualism and pseudo-professorial tone.
— Bill Butler · Jun 12, 03:09 PM · #
Bill,
What particularly bothered you about the Detroit discussion? Can you cite an example of Frum being pseudo-intellectual in this conversation? Why does the financial crisis rob Lindsey of credibility? Why does being wrong about the Iraq War rob Frum of credibility on discussions about domestic politics?
Any examples?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 12, 03:36 PM · #
Conor,
What bothered me about the Detroit discussion was the vaguely Social Darwinist tone in which the plight of the industrial working-class was discussed, the sneering, even slight aggrieved air of contempt and the total lack of empathy. It reminded me of the sorts of conversations that H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw used to have about whether the Eloi should supplant the Moorlocks or whether the Ubermenschen should supplant the Untermenschen. I could dove-tail this into Frum’s pseudo-intellectualism and lack of credibility by saying that while he has no sympathy for a working-class Detroiter so “uneducated” as to have made the mistake of becoming, say, an autoworker instead of, say, a peon in the service industry, he has lots and lots of sympathy for someone like himself who apparently was not well-educated enough not to have leant his bullheaded and belligerent rhetorical support to an unnecessary war that the U.S. essentially lost at the expense of many thousands of lives. Something similar could be said about Lindsey, who never misses a chance to chide others for not being as impressed by that “deep” thinker Ayn Rand as he himself is, even as the libertarian regime of wanton, anything-goes deregulation for the past thirty years has brought the economy crashing down, at the expense of many millions of people’s livelihoods and future prospects.
— Bill Butler · Jun 12, 05:01 PM · #
I found this really fascinating, and thanks for linking to it.
I was really surprised at how the white working-class has gone from the center of the Republican Party, the “Silent Majority”, to, to put Bill Butler’s point a different way, a liability in the eyes of some of the conservative tastemakers. They are so loud and tacky and rude! They don’t even read the Great Books! Has there always been that tension inside the conservative movement and it gets papered over?
Lindsey thinks some people chose to invest in human capital and some didn’t and that’s that. Frum looks shocked that line workers and shopkeepers don’t want to take jobs as hotel doormen (which he believes pays just as much – maybe it does in Canada).
Nixon understood.
— Rortybomb · Jun 12, 07:10 PM · #
Bill and “Rortybomb”,
We must have listened to two different diavlogs, as I didn’t hear any sneering on either side, and the discussion didn’t focus too much on why Detroit autoworkes are losing their jobs — only the observation that they are and that David is in fact worried about this and wants the Republican party to do something to address what might be called the concerns of the “blue-collar” middle-class — just like Ross and Reihan discuss in their take on how to reform the GOP (and to be fair to Brink, many of his libertarian ideas would help these folks as well — unions and government regulation are a big part of the problem and Brink is no friend to either).
I think both David and Brink (and Conor) are right that the best of the conservative tradition is to embrace serious ideas and middle-class aspirations. Remember, in the old days blue-collar folks might have been “loud and tacky and rude” but they didn’t want their kids to grow up that way (e.g. so they sent them to Catholic schools, stressed education, stressed traditional morals, etc.) It is Buckley, with all his elite education and upbringing, who said he’d rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the phone book than the elites on college campuses (or something close to that effect) who he saw as too full of goofy liberal ideas.
Finally, I would like these two to discuss their differences about social conservatism in more detail in a future diavlog. I think Brink forgets that for every ‘crude Bible thumper’ there is a smart Richard John Neuhaus (R.I.P.) or similar smart conservative Christian thinker who can make a good intellectual case for socially conservative ideas. Even a secular conservative like Derbyshire or MacDonald can respect and admire what Brink dismisses as “traditional hierarchies or gender roles”. In my mind you can’t explain the out-of-wedlock birth numbers in America (which are at crisis levels for Blacks and just passed the 50% mark for Hispanics) without talking about morality and the sexual revolution. I think David does respect these socially conservative ideas and yet wants the Republican party to market them differently than it has in the past (style versus substance) — us neo-cons love to talk about morality (see Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Victorians).
— Jeff Singer · Jun 13, 12:04 AM · #
Jeff,
I hear you, but I still beg to differ. It doesn’t strike me that either Lindsey or Frum have reached intellectual heights sufficiently high for either of them to condescend intellectually to blue-collar workers or to Bible-thumpers or to anyone else. Both Lindsey and Frum were rather “crude” (to use a favorite term of Lindsey’s) propagandists for one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in American history — the War in Iraq. If pundits and pontificators got grades instead of pay-checks from think-tanks, they both would have gotten “Fs.” on their poor performance the past few years on that basis alone. And if pundits and pontificators could be fired due to poor job performance the way that most blue-collar workers can be fired, then each of them likewise would have been. Maybe that would have been the best thing for pundit-economic efficiency. Survival of the fittest and all that good Brink Lindsey stuff, right? And this is to say nothing at all about how wrong Frum and Lindsey each have been on many economic issues lately. In any event, if globalization or laissez-faire ever brings economic efficiency to the pundit world, they ought still to to take heart. I hear there are plenty of high-paying bellhop jobs in Detroit, after all.
PS: To be fair, I should cut Frum a little bit of slack on the social-conservative front. He’s certainly trying to cover his own rear-end for the Republican Party’s failures by scapegoating Christian conservatives, but no more so necessarily than most of the libertarians and neo-conservatives are. Lindsay, however, is a whole ‘nother matter altogether. Simply put, the man is a vulgar, ignorant Christophobic bigot. Full Stop. He is much more vulgar, ignorant, and bigoted with regard to Christianity than any Bible-thumper I have ever met has been vulgar or ignorant or bigoted about anything at all. He would be hooted out of any seminary or religious studies department in the country — that is, if religious people or people educated on matters religious had manners as bad or minds as small as Lindsey’s own.
— Bill Butler · Jun 13, 01:55 AM · #
Bill,
Thanks for responding — ironically our little exchange re-enforces Conor’s original point that we can seriously disagree with one another and yet debate in a respectful and principled manner. You and I aren’t going to agree on much (e.g. I don’t think Iraq is even close to “one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in American history” — in fact I think it is a qualified success that may yet provide greater dividends than most people expect) and I think it is very seriously wrong to argue that Brink, David or any free-market conservatives have been wrong about many economic issues lately. The financial market collapse is a complicated story and has many villians — only one of which might be considered “we needed more government” (perhaps better government, but more? I don’t think so).
Anyway, you and I do agree, at least to some extent, that Brink and other libertarians (e.g. Will Wilkinson) evince a certain hostility and willful ignorance about Christianity that I find annoying. So it is nice that despite our political differences, the fact that we are brothers in Christ helps bring us together.
— Jeff Singer · Jun 13, 03:20 PM · #
the libertarian regime of wanton, anything-goes deregulation for the past thirty years has brought the economy crashing down, at the expense of many millions of people’s livelihoods and future prospects.
Bill, I have trouble imagining that anyone would describe the last 30 years that way.
— Tom Meyer · Jun 14, 11:19 PM · #