"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals…except the weasel."
As a longtime observer of movement conservatism, Jonah Goldberg is well positioned to comment intelligently about its current travails. Thus my eagerness to read this post, where he responds to recent analysis offered by Julian Sanchez. “Now, I think there’s some merit to what Sanchez says here,” Mr. Goldberg writes. “I have some appreciation for both the reality and the mirage of what Sanchez calls conservatism’s movement toward epistemic closure.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Goldberg doesn’t tell us why he believes that conservatism is moving toward epistemic closure, or what he regards as the cause of this problem, or how it might be acknowledged, addressed, or even remedied — these would seem to be relevant insights in a discussion that would redound to the benefit of the conservative movement, but rather than take them up, Mr. Goldberg predictably transitions to talking about how “this quest for epistemic closure is natural to all groups” and how “what I find amusing is that this is supposedly a particularly acute problem for conservatives, but not for liberals.” I say “predictably” because in his most formulaic work, Mr. Goldberg takes the topic at hand, sidesteps any critique aimed at the right, and transitions to talking about how the problem is actually liberal in origin, or that liberals do it more often, or that the left is actually more guilty of it, or whatever. This is persuasive at times, less so at others, and too often beside the point.
In this instance, for example, I very much doubt that anyone engaged in the conversation — Mr. Sanchez, Noah Millman, Matt Yglesias, Megan McArdle, as far as I know — dispute the fact that epistemic closure is a human tendency, or that all ideological movements suffer from it at one time or another. All of us, Mr. Goldberg included, seem to believe that “epistemic closure” is currently a problem on the right, so why does it matter that it is also a problem elsewhere? It would be great to get Mr. Goldberg’s thoughts since this is a subject we’re obviously keen on discussing — perhaps he has something right that one or all of us have wrong, and surely it is worth addressing a flaw in the conservative movement irrespective of whether or not the flaw is more or less pronounced in a competing ideological movement.
Turning to the post that Mr. Goldberg does offer, there are several items to address. He writes:
For more than a generation, liberalism craved and ruthlessly enforced epistemic closure. I hate to trot out Lionnel Trilling here (it’s such a cliché), but it’s worth recalling his famous 1950 line about how “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.”
This is presented as though liberals don’t acknowledge the excesses of The New Deal and The Great Society. Of course, it is widely if controversially held on the left that neo-liberalism saved their movement precisely by attacking its most tired orthodoxies of thought. Here is Nick Lemann, New Yorker staffer and Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, writing in an anniversary issue of The Washington Monthly:
When I first came to the magazine’s office for my job interview in the winter of 1976, I was amazed to see an issue just back from the printer’s with the cover line “CRIMINALS BELONG IN JAIL.” Charlie thought we would purify liberalism, the naturally dominant strain in American politics since his New Deal childhood in West Virginia, by relentlessly ridding it of tired, automatic bromides and by insisting that liberals see government’s performance as it actually was, not as liberals wished it to be. He wanted to understand and call attention to government’s failures so that in the future it would work properly, not so that people would stop believing government could solve problems. Nonetheless, issue by issue, this entailed criticizing liberals more often than conservatives.
I am sure Mr. Goldberg is aware of this history. Ask him about a liberal like Mickey Kaus, and he’ll acknowledge — more readily than some on the left — how important folks like him were to a revived Democratic Party that came to embrace balanced budgets, welfare reform, actual efforts to reduce crime, and a growing appreciation that markets can be useful in public policy.
Would the electoral success of Bill Clinton have been possible absent the neo-liberals and DLC types who laid the intellectual groundwork for his style of leadership? Whatever one thinks about President Clinton, wasn’t his brand of liberalism an improvement over the kind championed by Lyndon Johnson-era Democrats? These seem like awfully important aspects of liberal history to gloss over amid a narrative claim that the liberal mind has been steadily closing since 1950.
Mr. Goldberg goes on:
For decades, liberal elites abused their monopoly on the media and their near complete control of the commanding heights of the culture to attack not just conservative ideas, but conservative motives in order to render any serious alternative to liberalism a kind of crankery or fascism. That effort is still under way in the arts, in academia and in the few remaining bastions of the “legacy media.”
Nonetheless, over the last, say, decade and a half, the media climate has changed to the extent where at least one bulwark of liberal hegemony is unraveling. Fox News is the one conservative-oriented network. Talk radio is dominated by conservatives (largely because it came of age as an alternative to the liberal monopoly). In response, liberals have grown more shrill and desperate in their efforts to delegitimize conservative ideas, new and old.
These triumphant narratives about the rise of conservative journalism never seem to grapple with the fact that the right last experienced a significant triumph during Ronald Reagan’s administration, that the minor triumph of 1994 precedes the 15 year period Mr. Goldberg associates with the unraveling of liberal hegemony, and that since 1995, movement conservatism and its new ally, Fox News, haven’t actually accomplished anything very impressive beyond improving the egos of some right-leaning pundits and making a lot of money.
What if instead we measure success by asking what’s become of the country and its public policy. Is there anyone who believes that the Fox News era has been a good one for the right? The federal government now is far bigger than it was then, its growth and the exploding national debt and budget deficit grew steadily worse during eight years of Republican rule, the federal role in education has grown enormously, the right endured the scandals of Jack Abramoff and the K Street project, President Bush and President Obama both successfully passed costly new health care entitlements, and a democratic president as liberal as any since Jimmy Carter won the White House with a majority of the vote. If this is how the right fares during the celebrated rise of conservative media, forgive me for preferring the bad old days before its rise, when William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan were winning minds and elections without blond hair dye, faux-raving-lunatic populism everyday at 5 pm, or six figure book deals.
Mr. Goldberg writes:
So rapacious is the liberal desire for epistemic closure, liberals now want to claim not only Buckley but even Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan as champions of liberalism.
Seriously? “Liberals” want to do that? How many liberals? If you polled the entire American left, asking “Was Ronald Reagan a champion of liberalism?” what percentage of respondents would say yes? Am I supposed to regard this as a serious claim? It’s as if this is all a game to score rhetorical points so cheap that no intelligent interlocutor could possibly be swayed by them. It may be news to some person out there on the Internet that hyperlinks can be found to prove that some small number of liberals out there believe something wacky. But it insults the intelligence of those of us unsurprised by that fact when Mr. Goldberg offers these hyperlinks as though they prove wild, implausible assertions about liberalism generally.
Mr. Goldberg writes:
…my aim isn’t to defend the freshness of conservative (or libertarian) ideas from the charge of staleness. I think freshness is somewhat overrated. Two-plus-two-is-four is a very old observation. That doesn’t mean it has outlived its accuracy. It seems to me that when liberals control all of the policy-making apparatus, being the party of no is a perfectly rational stance that has less to do with a poverty of good ideas than an empirical appreciation for political reality. Lord knows the Democrats did not ride back to power on the backs of nimble and novel public policy prescriptions.
Ah yes, 2+2=4. Timeless. An elegant analogy, if only you could explain how it maps onto certain new problems that the country faces — take the Jim Manzi observation that in a globalizing world, the United States is going to have a more difficult time staying competitive than it did during the anomalous situation of easy American post-WWII hegemony, and that it’s going to be quite difficult to enjoy sufficient economic growth without destabilizing society, because that growth is likely to entail ever larger income inequality, something that threatens the stability of a country if it gets too large.
What is 2? What is 4?
The need for freshness isn’t necessitated by the abandonment of old truths, but by the emergence of new problems, and an uncertainty about what using old truths to solve them even means.
It is also worth remembering that back in the early 1990s conservatives successfully defeated Bill Clinton’s push for health care reform by being the party of no. As a short term strategy, it worked. In the intervening years, some intelligent conservatives worked on health care policy in think tanks, but movement conservatism as a whole utterly failed to grapple with the issue, whereas an entire think tank apparatus on the left did the opposite, including young Ezra Klein types who mastered the issue well enough to influence public opinion through their writing.
Thus President Bush, while in power, undertook to pass a costly new entitlement as his health care legacy, lacking any better ideas, a move that addressed none of the systemic problems in the field. And when his term ended, the Democrats conducted a primary where every serious candidate offered detailed visions for how to reform the health care system, whereas the Republican field offered as its most plausible counter… Romney-care.
It is no surprise, given all this, that Democrats eventually passed their health care agenda, the right never having taken up the issue with anything like the same seriousness. In the end, a plan always beats a lack of motivation to even bring up an issue. Had a bus hit Jim Manzi in 2005, the right would have as little to offer in the climate change debate, and I suspect his forthcoming book on globalization and economic inequality will be one of the only serious attempts to grapple with that issue, so that once again he’ll embark on a single-handed effort to engage in intellectually serious debates with leftist critics who have their own plans to address this issue. I am perhaps exaggerating the importance of Mr. Manzi, but basically it looks to me like he’ll advocate policy A, the left will advocate policy B, and Sarah Palin will point out that 2 + 2 = 4.
The reason so many of us — Megan, Julian, Noah, Will Wilkinson — have difficulty pining for the days when the Democrats no longer hold all the reins of government (and I do hope they lose the House come November) is that given the epistemic closure on the right, what are the Republicans going to give us? Another prescription drug benefit? Another No Child Left Behind?
In 2012 will Mitt Romney do for climate change what he did for health care in Massachusetts? Will Michael Steele shape a policy vision for the future? Is Sarah Palin going to issue a plan for American resurgence shaped by the newly hired editorial staff of the Weekly Standard? Perhaps there is something better than these nightmare scenarios to anticipate, but I confess that I don’t know what it could be other than the divided government I already want.
Thus I am engaged in this frustrating effort to improve discourse on the right, to force the conservative movement to grapple with its orthodoxies of thought, to contribute something more constructive than no, so that next time the right takes over there is something more than a void for Fox News personalities and Tom Delays and Karl Roves to fill.
As Megan wrote, in the post that Mr. Goldberg recommended:
Conservatives used to spend a lot of time complaining about the liberal media—and indeed, I have occasionally joined them. But it now strikes me that this was basically very healthy for the right. Everyone in the movement was frequently and forcefully confronted with the best the opposition had to offer; they could not be content with preaching to the choir. They were muscular—and liberals flabby—precisely because liberals didn’t really understand what they were up against. Now it looks to me as if conservatives are often voluntarily putting themselves in the same cocoon.
Cocoons, where people say things like “we need only apply our timeless equations of truth,” or “it’s enough to just say no,” or “there may be a problem in our thinking, but the important thing to focus on is that the other guys are worse.” Join us out here, Mr. Goldberg! We could use your insights, your intellect, and your writing, but this apologia and irrelevant deflection and nonsense about how liberals are claiming Ronald Reagan as their own?
It’s useless to us.
UPDATE: Mr. Goldberg has another post up, this time responding to Noah Millman. I am a bit confused, because whereas in his first post he said that there is “something to” Mr. Sanchez’s argument, and that he sees “the reality” of it as well as “the mirage,” his latest post proceeds as if the whole closing of the conservative mind argument is completely wrong. Also, since I’ve already gotten one e-mail, the title of the post is a Simpson’s quote, and no, I am not saying that Mr. Goldberg or anyone else is a weasel, just that in this instance he weaseled out of addressing the main thread in this argument, and I figured that he’d appreciate a good Simpson’s reference.
I should also note that for all the bite in my critique, I am after all calling for more Jonah Goldberg. I really do think this conversation could benefit from his insights about the problems with the conservative movement, rather than merely defending it as better than the left.
Conservatism has no policy content.
All of the bad things you list that happened in the Bush + GOP Congress era produced no effect on the support of rank-and-file ( http://www.gallup.com/poll/113770/Bush-Presidency-Closes-34-Approval-61-Disapproval.aspx ) or elected ( http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/24/gop-tribute-bush/ ) conservatives for Bush.
It’s not a political movement, it’s a tribe. We’re us and they’re them and that’s that.
Now, in theory, and in small pockets, conservatism can have policy meaning. But that’s not what it is to the actually existing GOP or its affiliates at NRO, Fox, and wherever else. Goldberg’s salary depends on his not understanding your point; surely you didn’t expect anything else.
Maybe this all began with the hero-worship of Bush Jr., or maybe it’s deeper than that. But that’s where we are.
— Elvis Elvisberg · Apr 14, 05:56 AM · #
*As a longtime observer of movement conservatism, Jonah Goldberg is well positioned to comment intelligently about its current travails. *
Conor, one of these days you’ll drop the tic of throat clearing and praising someone before you take them down. And Goldberg would be a good place to start – “well positioned to comment intelligently?” Then why doesn’t he? It seems your refutation of his two posts establishes he’s not a very bright guy.
— Gold Star for Robot Boy · Apr 14, 06:23 AM · #
Liberal epistemic closure is the predominant obstacle to innovative solutions at this point in time, since they have political power, so it’s useful to clarify the problem on the left — then, perhaps, conservatives can learn what not to do when they regain power. In the past, the right has been too influenced by the left’s closed, statist narrative, afraid to develope a new direction for classical liberal principles, so they’ve talked one way and governed another, bringing us to the brink of insolvency with watered-down policies meant to please everyone, but resulting in harming everyone. The old 2+2 principles are valid, they just need to be applied in bold new ways which address the left’s cliched demands for equality — the right needs to show how the equality issue hasn’t been addressed by left, just cynically used as a hammer to cower Republicans and expand a failing welfare state.
— mike farmer · Apr 14, 11:23 AM · #
Seems to me that this, from the second Goldberg link, is the crux of the argument:
“A lot of this closed-mind talk sounds like tendentious code for why conservatives should change their convictions. By all means, if people believe that this or that conviction should be dropped or altered they should make their case. But if you don’t win, have an open enough mind yourself to account for the possibility that you just weren’t that persuasive.”
The idea, then, is not that “liberals do it, too” is a defense. It’s that you have identified not a problem, but that you have simply noted a truth about groups in general. (As discussed.)
So your problem is not that conservatives have epistemic closure with regard to climate change, it’s that you don’t like where they locked the gates. Let’s say that 10 years ago, people from Heritage and Cato and the Eagle Forum and the Weekly Standard all agreed that climate change posed a grave threat to humanity, and after 10 years of discussion decided that the best response would be to impose a cap and trade system, with the cap set at X.YZ percent. Would the fact that Cato and the Weekly Standard and Eagle Forum and Heritage all agreed about this amount to epistemic closure? Or would that be OK?
It could be that the movement is wrong about climate change. But that’s a different problem than epistamic closure. I guess you could argue that “closure” on healthcare led to a worse bill than we might otherwise have gotten. But that’s an argument for better political gamesmanship than for epistemic openness.
— Sam M · Apr 14, 12:59 PM · #
Blond hair dye could be used to treat Goldberg’s flair closure. Find the right “product” to style up his mop, ala Heat Miser, then add a pair of earrings and a wardrobe of vintage bowling shirts, and he would be the Guy Fieri of Fox.
— turnbuckle · Apr 14, 01:13 PM · #
It seems to me that the comparative point is essential, and can’t be as easily dodged as Conor thinks it can. (If someone were to say that the left has a problem with racism, I assume he’d see the need for a comparative view.)
The mention of Kaus is instructive, but unfortunately Conor looks only to the past and not the present. Here’s someone who says some uncomfortable things to his fellow liberals (uncomfortable truths, if you ask me, but that can be bracketed), but who is undoubtedly a liberal. And look how he’s treated. He’s constantly held up for attack and ridicule, often in the most vile terms. And now he’s been denied, as a candidate, the opportunity to speak. Those are the signs of epistemic closure—a friend disagreeing must be shunned or silenced, lest others get the idea that disagreement (in this case, about the role of unions and the proper immigration policy) is OK.
So when we say that conservatives have a problem with epistemic closure, do we mean that they have a problem in some absolute sense, or in a comparative sense? Is it just that they fall short of some perfectionist standard? Or is it that they are doing worse on this point than other contemporary movements? I think for the claim to be meaningful it has to be the second, and yet that’s where the point fails.
I have to say a word about policy. Liberals are selling a free lunch. We shouldn’t pretend that their policy proposals involve some sort of grappling with real issues. Yes, Ezra Klein threw himself into the health care policy debate. And yet there is nothing that he believes about health care that resulted from his grappling with policy details. For him and others on the left, it’s the old 2+2=4. Which has worked pretty well for them.
— Thomas · Apr 14, 01:14 PM · #
What I see a whole lot of, and what goldberg’s “argument” exemplifies is the Peewee Herman rebuttal, “I know you are but what am I.”
For example, Breitbart saying that liberals are the “real racists”.
<a href=“http://vodpod.com/watch/3398713-breitbart-at-srlc-its-the-left-thats-racist”>Breitbart on racism.</a>
I just find Breitbarts speech astonishingly clumsy, coming in a week where southern governors are cluelessly celebrating Confederate History Month.
White christian conservatism is obsolete in the 21st century.
I think conservative intellectuals did a pretty good job of educating their base that birtherism is wrong.
Why can’t they do the same thing with racism?
If they don’t they deserve extinction by demographic timer.
— matoko_chan · Apr 14, 01:18 PM · #
sowwy violation of link protocol.
Breitbart claims liberals are real racists at SRLC.
— matoko_chan · Apr 14, 01:22 PM · #
Look, I said this ad nauseum during the presidential campaign: you can’t combat these kind of cultural judgments without combating them on the level of principle, and you can’t attack them from a position of principle while unapologetically using them. Liberals and conservatives both wage cultural war, it’s just that conservatives are allowed to do so openly.
Now, personally, most liberals I know are so sensitive to the accusation at this point that they are quite circumspect about not criticizing conservative culture in the usual terms. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? Either way, the fact remains that, yes, perhaps some gay Harvard educated Manhattanite artists are quietly mocking flyover state rubes. But if they are, they are doing so in a context where even within liberal environs, this is frowned upon, and in the media, is seen as tantamount to bigotry. Meanwhile, there are conservatives from “the heartland” who very openly and unapologetically think those Manhattan liberals are unAmerican, unpatriotic, and going to hell. Check your average Tea Party protest; we are okay with conservatives openly waging culture war against liberals.
As said above, “the other side does it too” is not a defense. And I’m not defending liberals who mock people who aren’t like them. But avoiding mockery of those who aren’t like you is in the liberal DNA, whereas conservatism has had to be dragged to that point at every historical moment. All the complaining about identity politics, about political correctness— that’s arguing against the principles that compel us not to mock those who are different from us.
So while I don’t excuse or ignore liberal cultural critique of conservatives, if you are dedicated to arguing against that kind of critique in general, focusing on liberals is bizarre. It is absolutely weird. Because it is not liberals who are waging this sort of war openly and explicitly. It is not liberals who are casting people outside of the condition of being a “real American,” it is not liberals who are declaring others to be lacking in patriotism, it is not liberals who are dividing the country into endless strata of worthy and unworthy. It just isn’t. And the fact that this conversation proceeds the way it does is just yet more evidence of the central dynamic of current American political discourse, the soft bigotry of low expectations that conservatives have whined their way into, the treatment of conservative argument to a weird, intellectual affirmative action.
You see this stuff all over. A lot of conservative intellectuals rail against liberal elitists for disparaging conservatives all the time, yet refuses to treat conservative insistence on the anti-American or unpatriotic nature of liberals with similar criticism. I could name a lot of names, here. There are so many dissident conservatives who won’t dissent on this issue, despite the fact that they themselves likely fall into the ranks of the unholy, if we’re going to let your average Tea Partier divide the country up. Like I said: bizarre. I don’t know if it’s self-hatred or what, but it’s not healthy.
— Freddie · Apr 14, 02:43 PM · #
Conor, do you REALLY expect a dullard like Jonah to seriously engage on an issue like this? This is a guy who thinks there’s a direct line from Rachel Maddow to Benito Mussolini. He can’t deal with epistemic closure because halfwit pundits like Jonah are one of the chief benefits of such closure. In a more open and fluid intellectual movement, Jonah would have been laughed back into being just a webmaster a long, long, long time ago while you’d be the one being invited onto CNN. The only things Goldberg brings to the table are a meager awareness of Gen X pop culture and the fact that he doesn’t come off as unhinged as Mark Levin. That is not the foundation of a meaningful thinker.
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 14, 03:11 PM · #
Incidentally, no, neoliberalism did not save liberalism. It brought liberalism to death’s door, and we have only begun to fix the damage.
— Freddie · Apr 14, 03:15 PM · #
What is the cause of conservativism’s “epistemic closure”?
The cause is that that’s how conservatives want it. Being exposed to new and challenging views is scary, and conservativism is primarily an ideology motivated by fear.
— Chet · Apr 14, 03:34 PM · #
Conor,
What’s funny about your love of Jim Manzi is that his awesome and singular contribution to the climate change debate is to convince many moderates and wavering conservatives (like me) who might have otherwise favored some type of cap and trade scheme or carbon tax that such an idea was foolish. In other words, through his brilliant analysis and ideas he helped the GOP (and conservative talking heads) embrace the party of NO label on this issue because it was the right idea.
matoko_chan,
You are silly and anyone with an ounce of sense knows slavery and race hatred is bad. However, understanding the Civil War and appreciating the honor and courage of men like General Lee and Stonewall Jackson should be part of everyone’s history — not just Southerners.
Freddie,
You say “Meanwhile, there are conservatives from “the heartland” who very openly and unapologetically think those Manhattan liberals are unAmerican, unpatriotic, and going to hell. Check your average Tea Party protest; we are okay with conservatives openly waging culture war against liberals.”
Care to provide any evidence of these outlandish assertions? The only guy I know of who accused anyone of being unpatriotic was David Frum and he was accusing the paleocons, who still can’t forgive him:
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/the-end-of-frum/
P.S. Those “Tigerbeat” ladies are just plain nuts…I think their heads would explode if I could introduce them to some smart Christian women I know who think traditional Biblical gender roles honor and respect women.
— Arminius · Apr 14, 03:57 PM · #
Well, maybe that’s fair, Arminius— I’m referring, among other things, to Sarah Palin talking about real and fake Americans, to the sound of great cheers, and similar. But I should be more responsible in presenting examples in print.
— Freddie · Apr 14, 04:10 PM · #
I dunno Freddie….I think liberals believe that the “conservative base” is racist, crazy, and stupid enough to be exploited by the grifters and demogogues that run them.
I don’t think the base has a clue about what conservatism actually means.
It is part of the anti-empiricism of conservatives.
Empirically, the demographic timer is ticking down and non-hispanic caucs are going to become an electoral minority in 2030. Acknowledging that empirical fact would mean recognizing purely white christian conservatism is doomed and moderating behavoir and ideology to attract minority and youth demographics, particularily college educated minority and youth…..
Yet instead of doing that they are whipping their predominantly white christian base into a lather with the same old sticks of race-baiting and IQ-baiting.
I don’t get it.
— matoko_chan · Apr 14, 04:19 PM · #
Arminius’ point about Jim Manzi gets it wrong. In my reading, Friedersdorf embraces Manzi because even when Manzi reaches the answer, no, it’s not because he’s leading with it. Goldberg’s posture, on the other hand, is quite different. He’s prone to start with “no.” His “no” tends to be tactical— guarding his stance is all-important, making provocative rhetoric and misdirection necessary. Manzi’s “no” is more secure, you could say, because he seems far more willing to subject it to scrutiny. His “no” is somehow engaged, while Goldberg’s struggles to deflect.
— turnbuckle · Apr 14, 05:27 PM · #
“I say “predictably” because in his most formulaic work, Mr. Goldberg takes the topic at hand, sidesteps any critique aimed at the right, and transitions to talking about how the problem is actually liberal in origin, or that liberals do it more often, or that the left is actually more guilty of it, or whatever. This is persuasive at times, less so at others, and too often beside the point.”
That is JG’s job, Conor. He is paid to be a polemicist and rhetorician for the far-right. I’m not sure why you keep expecting something else from him.
— Steven Donegal · Apr 14, 09:38 PM · #
While I’m sure that analyzing JG is fun, how about coming up with some new ideas instead of just talking about it? New ideas from liberals and big government conservatives are easy since the ideas usually involve increasing the power of the federal government. Obviously “lower taxes and vouchers” are the solution for every problem. Jk. Navel-gazing is nice, but how about helping reform the right with some substantive policy ideas. Conservative = brain dead is not a new idea – I’ve heard it my whole life.
— JC38 · Apr 14, 10:05 PM · #
JG has one good point when he says:
“A lot of this closed-mind talk sounds like tendentious code for why conservatives should change their convictions. By all means, if people believe that this or that conviction should be dropped or altered they should make their case.”
One GOP conviction is that the most important element in economic policy is that taxes should be cut: Bush Jr cut taxes more then any other president. The economy was terrible for most Americans during Bush’s presidency. Have you read anything from JG questioning supply side economics.
Conor, I think it odd you choose to ask JG to say anything questioning conservative dogma. Everything I read from him attacks the left. I don’t think he cares to analyze government policy.
The fact that AEI dumped Frum who does take government policy seriously and is willing to question GOP dogma and hires JG who spent his time writing a silly book devoted to trashing liberals demonstrates that conservative donors are interested more attacking liberals then addressing economic problems. The result is that rich conservatives will get to read more prose trashing the left while problems like health care and the federal budget deficit will be decided on liberal terms.
— Mercer · Apr 14, 11:44 PM · #
“A lot of this closed-mind talk sounds like tendentious code for why conservatives should change their convictions. By all means, if people believe that this or that conviction should be dropped or altered they should make their case.”
The point is that we have learned that the free market is not infflaible, that cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue, that finacial deregulation leads to massive recessions, that gay people are not in the thrall of satan, that calling a country we don’t like “evil” doesn’t do much to change that country, that blind patriotism leads to disaster, that tourture is a bad idea, that accountability was not the soloution to our schools problems…
These are all conservative ideas (in rough form). We have learned that they don’t work, or are not valid. So, if the conservative movment had an open mind it would acknowledge this and come up with some new ideas. I have seen this happening here and there, and maybe if with more time mourning in the wilderness more will see the need for new ideas, but currently the mainstream conservative movement has retreated into a defesive crouch. The political wing spends all it’s energy trying to sabotage Obama at the country’s detriment becasue they think this is a good political strategy, and the visionary wing is filled with nut jobs pandeing to even bigger nut jobs.
That is epistemic closure.
— cw · Apr 15, 05:06 AM · #
Goldberg is not a policy guy. Why do you bother with him. He is paid to attack and defend, mostly with snark. He is part of the problem you address, not part of the solution. It was guys like him that made me finally realize that after 30 years, the Republican party was not the place for me, well that and running up the debt plus crappy foreign policy.
Steve
— steve · Apr 15, 02:26 PM · #
Conor,
When folks like Mercer and cw come out of the woodwork and claim to be your allies, I think you need to take a deep breath and ask yourself am I doing what’s necessary to reform the conservative movement? Do you think Mercer is correct, as a factual matter, when he says “Bush Jr cut taxes more then any other president. The economy was terrible for most Americans during Bush’s presidency.” Or even better, do you think cw does a good job of fairly describing conservative thought with his paragraph that begins “The point is…” If not, shouldn’t you spend some pixels calling these goofs out on their outlandish claims? Shouldn’t you spend some pixels defending conservative ideas and principals so guys like Steve, who seem lost at the moment, realize that the country would be better served by Republicans who embrace conservative ideas rather than Democrats who embrace liberal ideas?
— Arminius · Apr 15, 03:12 PM · #
Arminius presents a a real time empirical example of epistemic closure.
What cw says is backed by empirical data.
NCLB was an EPIC Fail.
The premise of NCLB is so astonishingly stupid and anti-empirical that a sixth grader could understand it would fail….
“All american children shall be “proficient”(== above average) by 2014.”
erm….the Bell Curve of IQ?
Sixth graders are smarter than teatards I guess.
The rich/poor gap widened during Bush, inequality surged, and average income for the middle class in real dollars declined.
Supply side economics have proven empirically to fail at bootstrapping middleclass incomes, the unregulated invisible hand of the market did not create jobs, it just punched working class american families in the face.
The tea party is emphatically NOT the party of liberty, because the tea party is nearly pure WECs and social conservatives….Empirical observation….everyone in the tea party is SOME KIND OF CHRISTIAN.
Social conservative doctrine is deeply, profoundly, ILLIBERAL.
Arminius, you simply illustrate cw’s and Conor’s points about epistemic closure.
Are you a Goldberg sockpuppet?
— matoko_chan · Apr 15, 03:45 PM · #
Arminius,
I’ll address the claims of CW one by one.
“…cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue” — In general, I think that is accurate.
“finacial deregulation leads to massive recessions” — I’d contest that. Financial regulation is enormously complicated, and certain specific deregulation contributed to the current recession, but overall I’d say it’s a matter of smarter financial regulation, not more regulation, that is needed. And on matters of finance I don’t think there is any such thing as a unregulated system.
“gay people are not in the thrall of satan” — This is true!
“calling a country we don’t like ‘evil’ doesn’t do much to change that country,” — also true.
“blind patriotism leads to disaster” — True.
“Tourture is a bad idea,” — True.
“accountability was not the solution to our schools problems…” — Well, I contest the premise that No Child Left Behind is synonymous with “accountability,” but it’s certainly the case that backers of NCLB equated it with accountability, and that it wasn’t the answer.
Overall, Arminius, I agree that conservative ideas would serve the country better than liberal ideas, with exceptions on certain issues, but I don’t really see any evidence that Republicans embrace conservative ideas, or that the country is better served by empowering them. That certainly wasn’t the case the last time Republicans were in power.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 15, 03:52 PM · #
“the country would be better served by Republicans who embrace conservative ideas rather than Democrats who embrace liberal ideas?”
What conservative ideas are you talking about? Tax cuts and deregulation? Hegemonic military adventurism? Throwing civil liberties on the trash heap in the name of security?
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 15, 03:55 PM · #
“gay people are not in the thrall of satan” — This is true!
I’ll second this. Gays are definitely not in the thralls of Satan. Torture is really, really bad. Calling other countries bad names is not polite or helpful. Blind patriotism which does evil things because it’s blind is really, really stupid. Also, if conservatives support policies which would be, like, really bad for children, old people, the planet, gays, women, minorities and peace — well, this would be bad, too. You know, it might the conservatives who’re in the thralls of Satan, now that I look at it from this perspective. I’ve been epistemically opened and it feels, like, really, really good.
— mike farmer · Apr 15, 04:20 PM · #
What conservative ideas? In the health care battle, all we heard was tort reform (pennies on the dollar) and sale across state lines (worse than useless).
Many fisheries are on the verge of collapse. Where’s the public conservative push for reform of the Magnusson Act to establish individual take quotas?
The Bush tax cuts cannot be reconciled with our current military commitments. Where’s the conservative push to raise taxes and/or reduce military spending?
If climate change isn’t addressed, our military spending may well need to skyrocket as entire countries (eg, Bangladesh) are destabilized. Where’s the conservative push on climate change? Drill,baby,drill? The CRU’s a fraud?
Once upon a time, being conservative meant being a realist, and bringing capitalism, free enterprise and market forces to bear on serious problems. Can you name 3 problems that the conservative movement wants to address the next time a Republican is president (other than repealing the ACA)?
— Francis · Apr 15, 05:12 PM · #
Oy vey!
First of all, to respond to the always entertaining matoko-chan, I’m not sure I would describe NCLB as an “EPIC” fail, although like Charles Murray, I too reject educational romanticism and believe that ability varies and that half of the children on our schools are below average. But the push to make our school more accountable and transparent to parents and ultimately to give parents more choices with respect to educating their kids is still a worthy goal. We just need to have realistic expectation as to what it can accomplish and unlike Bush II, I don’t think the Federal government is the right entity to achieve these goals. Like many conservatives/libertarians, I’d be happy to abolish the Department of Education — the question is can we convince voters that this is a good idea that won’t hurt the good education that most middle-class parents are already getting from their school systems? That is the work Conor should be involved in. As for your other comments about the Tea Party members, for a guy who claims to love empirical data, you seem to want to willfully ignore the data we do have about Tea Party members ideological beliefs about government — and unless these folks are all lying to pollsters and to themselves they all say they want a smaller federal government that does less (including fewer federal regulations) with a concurrent lower federal tax burden.
As for cw’s claims, the question wasn’t whether or not they were true in some abstract sense, but whether he was fairly describing the views of Republicans during the past 8 years or fairly describing the thought of conservative thinkers. Even a neocon like me who fully supports the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and most of the War on Terror (I was convinced that waterboarding was wrong and I’m glad we won’t do it anymore) never believed in “blind patriotism”, whatever that might mean.
Finally, even though I really like Mr. Farmer’s comment, I have to disagree with both him and Conor about Satan and gay people. Of course, just because the Dark Lord has his grip on my gay brothers and sisters in Christ doesn’t mean they can’t resist, but to say they aren’t in his thrall is theologically incorrect.
— Arminius · Apr 15, 05:18 PM · #
“I should also note that for all the bite in my critique, I am after all calling for more Jonah Goldberg. I really do think this conversation could benefit from his insights about the problems with the conservative movement, rather than merely defending it as better than the left.”
What evidence can you provide that Goldberg is capable of these insights, let alone that he is withholding them?
— beejeez · Apr 15, 05:22 PM · #
Arminius,
Do you think most Americans did well economically from 1/2001 to 1/2009? What president cut taxes more then Bush Jr? You call my statements outlandish but you offer nothing to dispute them. Should the GOP keep pushing for more tax cuts regardless of what happens in the economy and the federal budget?
— Mercer · Apr 15, 05:33 PM · #
Yay for the intellectuals on the Right…happy to have you consider new directions, maybe even get some Policy ideas out of y’all. There are worthy conservative ideals and it would be nice to get back to them.
However, until you absolutely lose the 6000 year old earth believin’, fetus waving, fag-bashing, anti-brown people contingent, you’ll continue to be a laughingstock and your authentic conservative ideals will be ignored.
Lose the Culture War and their warriors and (re)gain intellectual respectability. The two are NOT mutually exclusive.
Until then, all your high-falutin’ talk ain’t going to get you a Majority.
— Russ · Apr 15, 05:39 PM · #
For Trilling, “Liberalism” was a term that included American conservatism. Louis Menand does a nice job of explaining this in his introduction to the most recent edition of The Liberal Imagination. But this wouldn’t be the first time that Jonah Goldberg failed to understand that words have different meanings in different contexts.
— Josh · Apr 15, 05:47 PM · #
Arminius,
Earlier you called yourself a “wavering” conservative. How so? Do you mean this in the sense that Tiger is a “wavering” slut because one time he passed on the chance to sleep with a cocktail hostess in Key West?
— turnbuckle · Apr 15, 05:57 PM · #
Liberalism and conservatism are notoriously difficult terms to nail down in their American context because we, unlike Europe, did not go through a feudal stage and so did not have the all-defnining, to the death conflict between Right and Left that helped to shape the understanding of these terms in the Old World.
Trilling and Louis Hartz are right. America is, and always has been a liberal culture, meaning that America has always valued freedom instead of obedience to authority, liberty instead of conformity to church dogma, democracy instead of monarchy or oligarchy, and rule of law instead of dictatorial whim. That is why Edmund Burke, father of Conservatism, supported the American Revolution while he used the French Revolution to define what his own conservatism was against.
American conservatives simply berate liberals for pointing out the obvious fact that America is, and always has been, liberal so that they can stoke right wing resentments at the supposedly insufferable arrogance and “closed-mindedness” of liberals who believe in free will and live and let live. They do this even as they define their own conservativism in liberal terms, appropriating liberal values of freedom, democracy, even free market capitalism as their own.
They’ve done this of course by re-defining liberals as ideological leftists and then moving into the vacated Liberal Estate themselves — but one in which the liberal values of freedom, liberty, democracy and especially free market capitalism are misused to justify rule by privileged conservative elites.
— Ted Frier · Apr 15, 05:59 PM · #
What incredible black cloud hangs over conservatives who try to engage in reasonable dialogue? And why should anyone take anything here seriously after the reference to Richard F Buckley? Bunch of losers.
— JohnMcC · Apr 15, 06:16 PM · #
JohnMcC,
Thanks for pointing out the typo, now fixed.
I am eager to hear your reasoning for dismissing an entire Web site due to a single error in a single post.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 15, 06:32 PM · #
“you seem to want to willfully ignore the data we do have about Tea Party members ideological beliefs about government — and unless these folks are all lying to pollsters and to themselves they all say they want a smaller federal government that does less (including fewer federal regulations) with a concurrent lower federal tax burden.”
You left out one other important thing the TPers want: they don’t want their personal benefits cut.
From the NY Times article on the TP poll:
[I]n follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.” Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits. Others could not explain the contradiction. “That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”Now perhaps Ms. White isn’t typical, but in my interactions with people like her (and since I’m about her age, I have lots of those interactions), it’s generally someone else that isn’t paying enough, or someone else that is getting too many benefits or someone else who is being advantaged too much. I don’t doubt the TPers are mad—I was mad for the entire Bush II fiasco. But that’s the real point here: the TPers are just basically Republicans who are mad they lost. I have no problem with that. But to portray them as some new force in American politics is just silly. You can pretty much draw a straight line from George Wallace to Ross Perot to the Tea Party. Different generations; same folks.
— Steven Donegal · Apr 15, 07:00 PM · #
If nothing else, these are the most reasonable, well-spoken comments I’ve ever seen about an article that dares to criticize a right-wing talking head. Or heavy editing is involved…
— Paul Stanley · Apr 15, 07:13 PM · #
Mercer,
To answer your questions in the order they appear: yes; in the 20th Century Kennedy came close, but I was actually surprised that Reagan’s cuts are only about 2/3rd as big as Bush II:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/323.html; and no, we should not keep cutting taxes without regard to the economy (cutting taxes will help!) and federal budget (cutting taxes will not help). So I suppose I owe you a partial apology for jumping to the conclusion that your statements were “outlandish” — they were only partially outlandish.
turnbuckle,
When I said I was a “wavering conservative”, I meant in the context of someone who wasn’t sure what to do about global warming.
Russ,
What makes you think that a) cultural conservatives hold those views you ascribe to us; and b) there is anything intellectually respectable about dismissing conservative arguments related to abortion, traditional marriage, and/or limiting immigration?
— Arminius · Apr 15, 07:50 PM · #
“I should also note that for all the bite in my critique, I am after all calling for more Jonah Goldberg. I really do think this conversation could benefit from his insights about the problems with the conservative movement, rather than merely defending it as better than the left.”
Conor,
I agree with much of your analysis. I do not agree with all of your positions.
As for Ezra Klein, I find Mr. Klein no different that Irving Kristol’s son or John P. Normanson – a perpetual victim with money and parentage taking that which used to be earned on the basis of merit.
Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy, like Irving Kristol’s son and John P. Normanson, is nothing more than a member of the Neoconservative “legacy media”. Without parentage, Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy would be selling aluminum siding out of the back of a rusty 1998 Volvo in the Jersey suburbs.
Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy fails to see the “problems with the conservative movement” that you describe – if for no other reason than Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy is one of those maladies and benefits quite handsomely in the areas of personal finance, employment, and visibility from these very problems.
Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy has no interest whatsoever in analyzing the status of the Conservative and Neoconservative movements and/or offering sound policy alternatives – much less initiatives – to those offered by Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. There’s no money and/or fame in such endeavors. Besides, it is far easier for Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy’s simply to criticize those who initiate proposals of this type.
Criticism remains the base on which the Conservative and Neoconservative movements have long operated. From Ronald Reagan’s “government is not the solution – government is the problem” to Ann Coulter’s defense of Joseph McCarthy to Amity Shlaes’s every-20-years attack on Roosevelt and the New Deal to John Boehner’s “hell no” rallying cry, the Conservative and Neoconservative movements rely on criticism, opposition, and little else. Such tactics have proven beneficial for the members of the Conservative and Neoconservative movements and quite detrimental to the nation and its citizens in the long term.
Ask yourself the last time a Conservative or Neoconservative media outlet actually provided a bit of first-source reporting. Not opinion. Not spin. Just basic reporting. The Who, What, Where, When, and Why of a story. Not rumors or allegations. Not a Drudge Alert or an Andy Breitbart temper tantrum. Just sound, basic, accurate journalism.
Name the last time a Conservative or Neoconservative media organization explained – accurately (death panels, flag pins, and tire gauges do not count) – the veritable nuts and bolts of a public policy story to readers, listeners, or viewers.
Kind of hard, isn’t it?
That’s because, and with all due respect, these Conservative and Neoconservative media organizations are not about the public service that once was (and still sometimes is) journalism. That’s not their purpose. That’s not why they were created. That’s not what their financial backers demand.
Instead, the Conservative and Neoconservative media outlets provide attack of opposing views, defense of their own, and spin. These are their sole purposes and/or reason for existence.
That’s why Lucianne Goldberg’s Little Boy cannot, and will not, take you up on your challenge. It’s just not his game.
— Mark · Apr 15, 07:53 PM · #
Epistemic closure indeed happens with both parties. So when JG asks what convictions within the current conservative closure should be dropped or altered, I would hope that is a sincere quest for input.
Surely he and others must realize that “lower taxes” or “no new taxes” as unwavering Republican positions aren’t grounded in reality if we want to keep from going under financially. We aren’t going to do away with certain entitlement programs. We aren’t yet able or willing to pull out of military foreign entanglements. We can’t realistically cut enough programs either to balance things out.
The problem with any epistemic closure is that if it goes on long enough, and if you’ve sold your party to the public on it long enough, it becomes near impossible to change. And yes, we have this in both parties. But in order for Republicans to ever again govern effectively, they must move outside the former circle whereby the party sells itself as one that never raises taxes. They could have worked well toward that end during the Bush administration after we went to Afghanistan and Iraq, and retained their fiscally conservative creds, had they simply told the American people that during war we must all sacrifice, and that in order to fund the war efforts, that sacrifice involved raising taxes, certainly not lowering them and telling the public to go shopping. I think members of their party would have accepted that, and certainly down the line it would have helped the party too in the next election cycle.
Our country needs both parties to have sound ideas on how to best govern; both parties must remain strong. It’s understandable that there is a fair amount of “NO!” within the Republican caucus on democrat legislation. But never have I seen the Republican party so devoid of any tangible ideas, or effective leaders, and it is frightening. Their epistemic closure on certain issues is hurting them and hurting our country.
— Mark R. · Apr 15, 08:07 PM · #
Conor,
JG has shown no interest in anything other then attacking the left.
The right needs to grapple with why the economy was poor under Bush instead of repeating thirty year old slogans if they want to govern successfully. The following article is a good example of the kind of things the GOP should discuss:
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-home-of-ones-own
— Mercer · Apr 15, 08:22 PM · #
“movement conservatism and its new ally, Fox News, haven’t actually accomplished anything very impressive beyond improving the egos of some right-leaning pundits and making a lot of money.”
That’s a feature not a bug.
— Tiparillo · Apr 15, 08:42 PM · #
It feels like this whole “epistemic closure” idea was floated in good faith, but it just seems to be turning into a polite way for heterodox types to criticize orthodox types (leaving party out of it) without getting into particular arguments on the merits. Everybody’s tired of arguing about “liberal fascism” with Goldberg, because he’s a crank, and you can’t convince a crank of anything, wether he’s invented a way of squaring the circle or wether he’s discovered the One True Interpretation of western political history.
So instead of trying to address crank arguments with facts, the heterodox types are now talking about how their media infrastructure prevents people from seeing the world differently. Thus, Goldberg’s ideas, and the beliefs of Tenthers and Birthers, presumably honest if wrong, are infantilized and held at a distance as merely symptomatic of some sort of quack pseudo-behavioralist phenomenon — which I might add, no one can prove exists. Sanchez himself smuggled the term in from the philosophy of logic and it’s not clear it has any real sociological applications.
In other words, talking about epistemic closure basically a highfalutin way of talking about “drinking the kool-aid.” I can see why people like Jonah would find it insulting and want to parry it, because it’s not something you can argue with. If you try to find fault with it, you’re exhibiting “denial.” You just gotta keep showing people the birth certificate, just gotta keep citing the facts.
— iluvcapra · Apr 15, 08:52 PM · #
Mark, You Don’t Actually Know Who Ezra Klein Is, Do You?
— uh · Apr 15, 09:13 PM · #
I have no qualms with this column other than your weaselly update, never apologize for a Simpsons’ quote.
I don’t apologize Lisa that’s just the way I am.
— Tam · Apr 15, 09:53 PM · #
While I agree that McArdle’s post in this conversation was “bizarre,” I find yours no less so.
The topic here is “the closing of the conservative mind,” the conservative echo chamber, or however you want to describe it, and you call for more participation from Jonah Goldberg? Inexplicable.
He’s the very fruit of that tree. Without the (very real, I believe) phenomenon under discussion, that guy wouldn’t have a job. It’s no less bizarre than wondering why, say, Hannity or Limbaugh don’t take steps to counteract the echo chamber effect. They’re the beneficiaries of it: why would they counteract it? Why would Goldberg?
— sneezy · Apr 15, 10:07 PM · #
“…but I don’t really see any evidence that Republicans embrace conservative ideas, or that the country is better served by empowering them.”
Well, this is just “no true Scotsman.” Every single Republican politician out there and virtually every Republican voter self-identifies as “conservative.” It may be in your interest to quibble with them over that, but for people who don’t consider themselves part of some “conservative movement,” it’s a distinction without a difference.
The Republican party effectively is the conservative party in the US whether you like it or not.
— sneezy · Apr 15, 10:21 PM · #
“You just gotta keep showing people the birth certificate, just gotta keep citing the facts.”
But when folks are impervious to facts or counter with lies they unshakeably regard as facts…what do you do?
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 15, 10:44 PM · #
Of course, bias burdens our cognitive capacity. But conservatives of all people should appreciate that experience and observation are more reliable guides than ideology and dogma.
Thanks a lot for a thought provoking essay, Mr Friedersdorf.
— Hellmut · Apr 15, 10:48 PM · #
A couple people seemed to think that the ideas I listed above as “conservative” were not actually supported by conservatives. I would like to hear more on this. Explain yourselves.
— cw · Apr 15, 11:08 PM · #
“What makes you think that a) cultural conservatives hold those views you ascribe to us; and b) there is anything intellectually respectable about dismissing conservative arguments related to abortion, traditional marriage, and/or limiting immigration?”
Arminius, pardon but I think I understand the whole problem.
The reason all those arguments are entirely dismissible is they are based on superstition instead of empirical fact.
There has been a lot of polling to determine the demographics of the teabaggers…oops….tea party attendees.
According to the recent CBS/NYT survey, Tea Party supporters identified as 61% Protestant and 22% Catholic.
I think the pollsters need to ask one binary question…..are you a christian or a not-christian.
You see….I think belief in the Baby Jesus, immaculate conception, and the risen godhead is the single unifying theme of the tea parties.
I bet belief in Baby Jesus is > 99% in the Tea Party….and they won’t lie about that….unlike the temptation to pretend the tea parties are bipartisan by lying about party affiliation..
— matoko_chan · Apr 15, 11:32 PM · #
“According to the recent CBS/NYT survey, Tea Party supporters identified as 61% Protestant and 22% Catholic.”
These poor people have been polled to death — a recent poll showed higher levels of education than the general population — you gotta love the hoopla.
— mike farmer · Apr 16, 01:40 AM · #
matoko_chan,
I’m not sure I follow you — despite some decline over the past few decades, most Americans, whether Democrat or Republican identify as Christian. So your point is?
— Arminius · Apr 16, 02:45 AM · #
M-Chan:
Where you been?
— cw · Apr 16, 04:24 AM · #
You live without their support. If a sufficient number of Americans are impervious to facts, then the political system is doomed regardless of who’s running it… a republic is only guaranteed to operate properly if people in general acknowledge the real world as it is, and is predicated on the assumption that people, in aggregate are basically reasonable. If that assumption is wrong, there’s nothing really to do…
— iluvcapra · Apr 16, 05:21 AM · #
Arminius, my point is that asserting belief in Jesus is the single unifying principle that unites the tea partiers.
Christian represents a single single part of the American demographic.
In a Venn diagram the tea parties represent a subset of American christians.
In 2008 WECs were 50% of the GOP in exit polling.
The poll questions I would like to see about tea party christianity are…
1. Is it mandated for christians to proselytize in the Bible?
2. Is christianity the one true religious faith, or are other faiths valid?
3. Was America a judeo-christian nation at incept? Is it now?
That sort of questions.
I think the one thing that unites the tea partiers is a sort of political evangelical christianism.
You might see some minor variance in race and political affiliation….but I would bet the farm that nearly 100% of the tea party attendees claim Jesus as their savior.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 12:36 PM · #
Again, I want to differentiate my position from Dawkins on religion.
I’m more a Scott Atran kind of girl.
Religion is not intrinsically evil….religion evolved as a fitness advantage for homo sap.
Evangelism, the idea that only one religion is true, or that the ingroup religion should be imposed on outgroups for their own good is the problem.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 12:42 PM · #
Arminius, I guess my point is….you can identitfy as a christian and not be in the tea party….but my hypothesis is that almost everyone in the tea party will identify as christians.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 12:59 PM · #
“my point is that asserting belief in Jesus is the single unifying principle that unites the tea partiers”
Wow, what a shocker to me and my friends – we are in a religious movement! You could make the above statement about almost any group in the U.S. or Mexico. Once again, m_c’s obssession with identity politics has caused him to completely miss the point. Talk about a cocoon! Like many of the other left-oriented posters here, m_c seems to suffer from the same state of being that many on the right suffers from…. I agree with much of CF’s analysis about the state of the right, but it just tickles me when lefties come over here to dance on the right’s grave. Maybe the left’s intellectuals are truly more open minded (I don’t know), but the numerous rank and file lefties that I known in my personal life are as close minded and irrational as those on the right watching Fox news 24 hours a day. I am not saying this to let the right off the hook, but just to balance some of left-wing self-righteousness I see in posters like m_c on this topic.
— JC38 · Apr 16, 01:28 PM · #
I come back here every month or so hoping you are gone. But every time I come back, you are still here.
— Eric · Apr 16, 01:41 PM · #
sry, Eric, I come back once in a while.
I continue to marvel at the devolution of my grandfathers (and WFBs and Jack Kemps) party.
I’m interested in the demography of the Tea Party.
Is that a crime?
MY hypothesis is that one can be a christian in America and not be part of the Tea Party, but if one is part of the Tea Party, one is almost sure to be a christian.
The Tea Party is religiously homogeneous on christianity.
Also, as a sometime statistician, christians are unlikely to lie about their religious preference on a survey instrument, while they often lie about racism, political affiliation, and IQ gradient or education.
I don’t understand why that would upset anyone……it is just data.
Where have all the Unicorns gone?
To the Tea Party.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 02:17 PM · #
“You live without their support. If a sufficient number of Americans are impervious to facts, then the political system is doomed regardless of who’s running it… a republic is only guaranteed to operate properly if people in general acknowledge the real world as it is, and is predicated on the assumption that people, in aggregate are basically reasonable. If that assumption is wrong, there’s nothing really to do”
You’re avoiding the point. There are always nutters in any society, but when you look at the histories of human societies there are times when there are more nutters and times when there are fewer, times when the nutters have more political influence and less, times when the nutters are nuttier and times when they’re more nutless. There are obviously factors at play that produce such differences.
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 16, 02:56 PM · #
matoko_chan,
You could be right about the Tea Parties, but so far the data doesn’t exist to support your theory. Instead we have the latest NYT poll which has data that basically supports my theory that the Tea Party folks are ideological, not particularly religious:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html
Finally, black support for the President is close to 90% and blacks consistently identify in polls as Christians (we can argue whether or not someone like the Rev. Wright, Obama’s former pastor, should be considered Christian, but for the sake of argument, let’s say he is). So how do you square the fact that Christians and minorities seem to be two sets that overlap almost completely?
— Arminius · Apr 16, 03:18 PM · #
Umm…I am not attaching a value judgement to christianity.
I am talking about self-described christians.
Rev. Wright selfdescribes, so for the purpose of my proposed experimental design he is a christian.
Like I stated in my hypothesis, I suspect the set of American christians is a simple superset of Tea Party members.
No fuzzy subset theory involved. :)
It is just data….it is neutral.
I’m not making a value judgement on christianity.
I am just advancing the hypothesis that Tea Partiers would uniformly self-describe as christians.
I distinguished myself from Dawkins because I’m pretty sure that my observations on the demography of the Tea Parties will draw accusations of me practicing anti-christian bigotry.
I’m not a bigot against christians, I merely suspect that evangelical christianity, and indeed, anysort of evangelism, causes discord and strife in the super group homo sapiens sapiens.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 04:16 PM · #
“According to the recent CBS/NYT survey, Tea Party supporters identified as 61% Protestant and 22% Catholic.”
which makes 83% selfdescribed christians….are there muslim or atheist or scientologist or buddhist Tea Partiers?
Who makes up the other 17%?
Some Tea Partiers could be black christians, some could be politcal democrat or independents, and still self-describe as christians.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 04:29 PM · #
matoko-chan,
I think you are being disingenous — first you talk about “Christians”, then you shift the discussion to “evangelicals”, which you claim cause “discord and strife” without providing any clear evidence that this is the case. I know this is sort of going off topic by now, but you really need to rethink all your assumptions about Christians, evangelical or otherwise. I may not agree with Freddie about much, but I think he was closer to the mark at the beginning with his comment that both liberals and conservatives work from a set of cultural or value assumptions and there is nothing wrong with making those assumptions known and arguing over and/or debating those assumptions. “All men are created equal” is one such assumption that guided our Founders as they thought about creating this country. What the heck they meant by “men” and “created equal” are complicated questions, but interesting ones that we can sit down and debate. Likewise, when I tell you that I think every child deserves a mother and father, this is a value judgement that I’m willing to argue over and defend, just as I’m sure you would be willing to argue over and defend the proposition that it is fair for the government to redistribute wealth from rich people to poor people or to force rich people to pay higher marginal tax rates than poor people.
Finally, I think both you and Conor will enjoy this essay:
http://www.familyinamerica.org/index.php?doc_id=2&cat_id=7&part=1
— Arminius · Apr 16, 04:51 PM · #
No Arminius.
Read my lips.
I believe all members of the Tea Party would self-describe as christians.
That is a hypothesis.
That is not a good thing or a bad thing it is just a thing.
My brief with evangelicals is a defense of religion, actually.
Not all evangelicals are christians, not all christians are evangelicals.
also, too.
my hypothesis is that nearly all (eg, statistically significant) the members of the Tea Party would self-describe as christians, the definition of christian meaning believes in the risen Christ, in Jesus….and that Tea Party self-described christians are a simple subset (not a fuzzy subset) of all American self-described christians.
I am not attributing any particular meaning to my hypothesis…..it is an observation.
It is interesting to me that this appears to be so.
America is not very homogeneous usually.
Perhaps you can posit an explanation of why this would be?
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 06:16 PM · #
And pardon, that is not what the framers said.
All men are created equal UNDER THE LAW.
Thomas Jefferson at least was certainly cognizant that NO men are created equal under the genes.
— matoko_chan · Apr 16, 06:22 PM · #
matoko_chan,
Jefferson might have been cognizant of that fact, but the Declaration of Indepedendence says nothing about all men being created equal under the law. Nothing at all. It does have one of my favorite politically incorrect lines ever about Native Americans:
“He [King George] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
Anyway, I doubt your hypothesis is correct about the Tea Party members and it doesn’t seem like an interesting subject anyway. I’m much more interested in why you seem obsessed about evangelicals.
— Arminius · Apr 16, 09:22 PM · #
Trying to judge “open-mindedness” by the degree to which someone believes the same things as you is pretty much fail.
What someone believes is not what determines the openness of their mind. How they respond to new evidence is what determines the openness of their mind. You may not be encountering “close-minded” liberals; you may in fact be encountering liberals who are correctly apprehending the things you’re telling them as wrong.
— Chet · Apr 17, 01:14 AM · #
lawl, every one is obsessed with tea party demographics.
its pretty much established that the tea party is much older and much whiter and much …..maler than mainsteam america.
I think its pretty damn interesting that the tea party is homogeneously CHRISTIAN.
Should be simple to test.
;)
— matoko_chan · Apr 17, 01:29 AM · #
Anyway, I doubt your hypothesis is correct about the Tea Party members and it doesn’t seem like an interesting subject anyway.
relly?
If im right I think it would be extremely bad PR fot the teapartiers.
They seem increasingly desperate to prove some sort of bipartisan/multi-ethnic/multi racial representation.
I think I’ll go ax Nate what what he thinks.
:)
btw, I don’t know how you can spin this other than the republicans relly do hold the intelligence of their base in breathtaking contempt.
Again, this is a tactic, not a strategy.
Its not just the epidemistic closure and the pure-D dishonesty and demogoguery….it is the utter inability of the GOP to be able to deal with empiricism and cultural and demographic evolution.
In classic game theory the way to maximize both sides winnings is cooperation.
I think fillibustering financial reform is truly pathological.
Evil may flourish like the green bay tree for a while, but the demographic timer is still going tick….tick….tick.
— matoko_chan · Apr 17, 01:34 PM · #
An exclusive investment firm estimates US illegal immigrants to reach about 20 million people. If President Obama would give in to their calls, wouldn’t that possibly be 20 million democrats? Plus the yearly percentage multiply?
— Immigrant kid · Apr 23, 12:32 AM · #
I know I’m late to the party here, but feel compelled to remind Mr. Friedersdorf that the divided government state that he (and I) “already want”, does not actually exist right now. If we do get there in 2010, I’ll be perfectly happy with a re-elected Barack Obama in 2012 – just in case the conservatives are not deemed to be sufficiently intellectually buff to suit Conor and Megan.
As a confirmed dividist who did not vote for Barack Obama in 2008, I look forward with the HOPE™ that I can be an enthusiastic supporter of his re-election in 2010. All it will take to turn me into a kool-aid swilling Obamite is a Republican majority in firm control of Congress.
As an fyi, I have also included a link to this post in my periodic compilation of writing on divided government – The Carnival of Divided Government
— Dividist · Apr 23, 06:54 PM · #