Realservatism
I’ve just changed my “political views” on my Facebook profile from “Estonian Reform Party” to “Realservative.” I continue to dearly love the Estonian Reform Party, one of my ten favorites in the North Atlantic community. (I’m also pretty fond of the Piratpartei.) But I’d like to explain “Realservatism” and what it is really about.
(1) Being really, really, really real. This is a bedrock, inviolable principle of Realservatism.
(2) Keeping it really real. Why be real in the first place if you drift away from realness over time? There’s no sense in it.
(3) Being realer than an onion peel. It is useful to have external metrics for one’s overall realness level. I find that an onion peel — already quite real — is a solid one. If you’re realer than an onion peel, you’re doing something right.
(4) Realism. Let’s appreciate the limits of what we can do and what we can know definitively. There are lots of unknown unknowns — another way of putting this is that Knightian uncertainty is important to keep in mind. I had an exchange with a reader recently — he wanted conclusive evidence that I was right to favor decentralized to centralized solutions to problems, which I found odd. Here’s what I wrote:
Anyone who tells you that there is conclusive evidence in the terrain of public policy is not a serious person. Can I point to any conclusive evidence? Absolutely not. Again, there is no conclusive evidence in the realm of public policy because it is not an experimental science. My bias in favor of state solutions and county solutions and town solutions, etc., is a bias in favor of decentralized discovery processes that allow for cheap failure and fast failure. I am under no illusion that free markets always lead to “good” outcomes (good for whom?). Rather, I simply think that small-scale and private failures are easier to wrap up, particularly if you have a decent, transparent regulatory architecture.
In his reply, he suggested that I was suggesting that it is only faith that drives my policy views and not reason, which I found a bit off. I then wrote:
I believe in using the common-law process of gathering a broad body of evidence, expert testimony and precedent. This does involve using reasont. But I don’t believe that there are any ways to settle these disputes in any definitive way. That’s life.
This view reflects the influence of thinkers like Hayek, Keynes, Knight, and, among more contemporary thinkers, Amar Bhide, Edmund Phelps, and, very importantly, our own Jim Manzi and Tim Lee, among others. Maybe that’s wrongheaded of me. It does, however, strike me as really, really real.
actual lol
— paul h. · Jan 20, 06:26 AM · #
There is no empiricism in you anymore, Reihan.
You have shamelessly defended Cheney, Bush, Palin, Limbaugh, Beck….. all the worst excesses of the nihilistic populist right.
You sold your soul to Kylon with the rest of the soi-disant “conservative” intelligentsia.
Well perhaps Torturegate is going to finally turn you into a real boy, Pinnochio.
The Bush administration TORTURED human beings to death and then tried to cover it up.
That is real….not Manzi’s fantasy supply-side economics or the discreditted antique first culture intellectuals you shamelessly and endlessly cite.
“Wrongheaded” doesn’t even begin to approximate your self-delusion.
This is for you, especially for you…..
Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only jokin’. —TMBG
— matoko_chan · Jan 20, 06:39 AM · #
I think you’re wasting your time with Torturegate, matoko_chan. I have seen (from a safe distance) several wars unfold in my lifetime including the Vietnam war. I have also read some about the histories of several wars from before my time.
And my impression is that war is of the dark side. Once people start down that path it never ends without many evils coming to pass. Anyone who thinks that war can be constrained by lawfulness and reason, is just flying in the face of all human history and experience. Laws are passed by people far from the heat of battle.
So I would also say, “Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only jokin’”. But I would apply it to war itself.
For instance. If President Obama is supporting a war in Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter, even for the noblest causes. I believe many dark things will emerge from it in the fullness of time. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Bush and Cheney as such. It’s not that simple. I think it is the original sin of killing as an act of state that does it. And in that sense, Obama has already gone a long way down that road, with the drone attacks in Pakistan, etc, etc.
Evil is in us matoko_chan and we are also in it. It is not something we can separate ourselves from. Place the perpetrators on trial if you wish, but it will never change anything really, even if it makes you feel nobler. And we will never change. Next war it’ll happen all over again. It’s quite possibly happening now.
— Keid A · Jan 20, 09:15 AM · #
The line is “Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.” Small point, to be sure.
Your characterization of my views bears no resemblance to reality, Matoko. I have to say, I’m impressed by your ability to single-handedly destroy this blog by driving away lots of commenters and bloggers, which was evidently your goal. Congratulations to you on a hard-won victory. Your scabrous, contemptuous tone has made blogging here the opposite of a delight.
— Reihan · Jan 20, 02:22 PM · #
kiddin’ …..tant pis, you get the gist.
My goal was revenge.
You ganked me, you more than anyone.
Do you even remember what I once saw in you? Someone that actually cared for the working class…that believed in stewardship and nobility.
You are just another carny shill like the rest of the bourgie conservatives.
A sell-out, a Palin pimp and a Cheney apologist.
I hold you all in utter contempt.
— matoko_chan · Jan 20, 02:52 PM · #
You’ve been very angry, lately. I think you think that people are chafing against it because you’ve moved to the right, or failed to move to the left, or some such. But the truth is that you’ve done something I never thought I’d see you do, which is become a scold. I don’t know if the servers at National Review just infect everything with partisan anger or what, but I do think it might do you a bit of good to just go through the Agenda’s archives, dispassionately, and ask yourself if this isn’t a significantly different voice than the one I’ve been reading for years.
And I say that only as a fan, as a consumer of your brand, someone who has read and enjoyed your work for years.
My prescription: less Paul Krugman.
— Freddie · Jan 20, 03:18 PM · #
Um, Reihan? I agree one hundred percent with your comments about matoko; I have no idea how she has the time (or why she has the inclination) to disrupt (if not ruin entirely) every comment thread on this blog. But as the site administrators, isn’t it your responsibility to filter out trolls? I’ll admit that the line between trolling and spirited debate can sometimes get blurry, but there hasn’t been any doubt about matoko since…maybe her fourth or fifth comment. Aren’t you and the other administrators almost as responsible as she is at this point? I am sure matoko is a lovely individual in person, but it doesn’t come across often in comment threads. I’d personally be more likely to support realservatism if its champions adopted a realistic policy on trolls.
— JH · Jan 20, 03:41 PM · #
Not until your movement addresses its realer than a blade of steel, realer than Deltha O’neal realness gap will I consider coming into your tent and pissing on y’alls sleeping bags.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 20, 03:59 PM · #
Reader and hero Ken B put together a great greasemonkey script that will edit out matoko and chet. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/55304. All you see is ‘comment removed.’
I can only hope version 2.0 will replace matoko’s comments with this:
— Ben A · Jan 20, 04:22 PM · #
JH: Matt Frost and co. have tried to persuade Matoko, and, failing that, there have been efforts to ban Matoko. But evidently the technology is not suitably advanced.
As for Freddie: Yes, I’m disappointed with many people I used to consider thoughtful interlocutors. Having spent a lot of time criticizing “my team,” I’m struck by the guilt-free rah-rah partisanship. I wouldn’t say “angry,” though I do get “angry” at Krugman’s approach to conversation.
My sense is that I am an outlier for a lot of reasons: my identity is loosely and not tightly coupled to my politics, I don’t think that people who disagree with me are moral monsters and my working assumption is that I generally have something to learn from them, and I only get “angry” at people who attack other people unfairly.
Kristoffer: We’re just getting started.
— Reihan · Jan 20, 05:13 PM · #
matoko_chan,
I hold you all in utter contempt
Do you know what your argument sounds like to me matoko_chan?
“Only your shit smells bad. Our shit will smell like roses”.
Well I have a message to you directly from our Father below. And He says,
“You lie. All roads that pass through war lead directly to me”.
There is no way to swim through that cesspool and not be mired by it.
If you want to stay on the side of the Angels: Don’t Kill.
— Keid A · Jan 20, 05:38 PM · #
As the reader who sent Reihan the emails in question, I’d like to take the opportunity to take a brief quibble with his summary of my remarks. I didn’t ask for “conclusive evidence that [Reihan] was right to favor decentralized to centralized solutions to problems,” I asked
Likewise, the “faith” comment came from an earlier remark of Reihan’s:
I’m not trying to win any kind of argument here – my conversation with Reihan seems to have devolved into an odd kind of meta contest where we’re discussing whether it’s useful or even worthwhile to attempt to have a conversation about some of this stuff. (I’m swiftly coming around to Reihan’s apparent position of “no”, and it’s not something I’ll be trying again anytime in the near future.) But I did think it was worth adding a bit more context here.
— Chris · Jan 20, 06:06 PM · #
Not advanced enough for an IP ban? Please. No, it’s clear that having her around is useful, because it allows you to blame the site’s decline – the result of it having become Conor’s dumping ground for the stuff that’s not good enough for his other blogs – on a woman with high-functioning autism.
What did you think was going to happen, Reihan? TAS would stay your own collective mutual admiration society? It never fails to amaze me how TAS contributors write such eloquent posts and then proceed to behave incredibly boorishly in their dealings with skeptical commenters.
— Chet · Jan 20, 06:09 PM · #
Matt banned me and Jim made him put me back.
someone else banned me when I called PEG a liar on aSCR/eSCR, which he was.
i don’t care.
Reihan, I loved you when I read your book….but there is nothing left of that Reihan.
My grandfather would spit on you for pimping Palin and defending the Bush/Cheney Torture administration.
And so would WFB.
I’m done here, have your nice little echo chamber back.
— matoko_chan · Jan 20, 07:08 PM · #
So much for this place being a brief escape from work. Now it’s just like work — “It’s your fault!” “No, it’s your fault!”. Well, at least it feels familiar and comfortable.
By the way, thanks Ben A for the appreciation. I feel obligated to point out that I didn’t create it ex nihilo — I was aware of similar scripts for other sites and managed to track one down that I could adapt fairly easily. Just a note of clarification, the list of commenters to be ignored can be edited easily enough, should your reading tastes not match mine; and Ben, feel free to replace the bit of the script that says ‘Comment Removed’ with your URL.
What I really need to do for version 2.0 is to figure out how to block out not only that list of commenters but also any other comments that respond to them…
— kenB · Jan 20, 08:21 PM · #
Right, I mean, you wouldn’t want anything to pierce your bubble.
— Ch3t · Jan 20, 08:28 PM · #
KenB, it really made life better. Hats off!
It kills me that the bitchin’ picture of Journey isn’t displaying.
— Ben A · Jan 20, 08:34 PM · #
Chet, if I were interested in filtering out any viewpoints besides my own, I’d have to add a lot more names to that script. There are other liberal commenters here who are capable of disagreeing without consistently being an asshole about it.
BTW, no need to modify your name — no Firefox for me here at work. :(
— kenB · Jan 20, 08:40 PM · #
Uhh . . . onions have skins, not “peels.”
— ste4ve · Jan 20, 11:28 PM · #
Y’all are going to end up being another site where people go to agree with each other.
— Johnw · Jan 21, 12:05 AM · #
“Is it real, son? Is it really real, son? Let me know it’s real son, if it’s really real.”
-Keynes. Or Method Man. Can’t remember.
— Hollis · Jan 21, 12:33 AM · #
Reihan, before you accuse me of not being real, you should know that I have been planning for some time to change my “political views” from nothing to Piratpartei.
— Andrew · Jan 21, 01:58 AM · #
How am I an asshole? Especially, how am I an asshole compared to PEG or KVS?
— Chet · Jan 21, 02:38 AM · #
This blog is so weird. These comments! It’s like listening to my parents.
— Obliterati · Jan 21, 04:04 AM · #
Chet: Huh… I always assumed that you were aware of how needlessly combative your comments were and just didn’t care. If you really don’t see it, then I guess you’re not an asshole.
— kenB · Jan 21, 04:51 AM · #
Best comment ever?
This blog is so weird. These comments! It’s like listening to my parents.
— Obliterati · Jan 20, 11:04 PM
— Reihan · Jan 21, 05:47 AM · #
Well, look, there’s necessarily a degree of combativeness to saying “you’re wrong, and here’s why” or even “you’re lying, and here’s how I know.” That’s the only combativeness I enter debate with. When people start calling me names, though, sure, I ratchet it up a notch. But I don’t treat people any worse than they treat me.
— Chet · Jan 21, 05:57 AM · #
TAS would stay your own collective mutual admiration society?
— Freddie · Jan 25, 03:07 PM · #