RSS Feed MenuBruce Bartlett sends this email:
I’ve been thinking lately that conservative elites are reaching a moment similar to that which confronted liberal elites in the late 1960s. At first they saw the rise of SDS, the Black Panthers and other extreme left groups as cannon fodder that could be used to achieve liberal goals. (Norman Podhoretz goes into detail on this point in Breaking Ranks and Tom Wolfe made fools of them.) But one day liberals realized that the extremists couldn’t be controlled and threatened anarchy. I read somewhere that the seminal event was when student radicals threatened to burn the Harvard library. This sort of thing led to the rise of neoconservatism (not the foreign policy variety, but the original one). I think conservative elites today see the teabaggers, birthers and other kooks as cannon fodder for larger conservative goals the same way liberals originally saw student radicals in the 1960s. I think one day soon something like the Harvard library burning is going to make conservatives realize that these people present more of a threat than a tool for advancing conservative goals. I hope it doesn’t involve an assassination or Oklahoma City-type event. But you can’t pour fuel on the fires of peoples’ emotions the way Glenn Beck does on a daily basis without getting an explosion at some point.
Bartlett’s comparison is thought-provoking, but I think fails for the following reasons:
1) The radical left of the 1960s was not “cannon fodder” for liberal elites. On the contrary, liberal elites were the principal target of the radicals. Student radicals hated Clark Kerr and Robert McNamara as much or more than they hated J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. The Panthers despised the civil rights leadership at least as much as they hated George Wallace. Today’s angry conservative base by contrast directs its rage across the partisan divide.
2) Liberal elites kept a much greater distance from the radicals than conservative elites do. Can you imagine the Sulzberger or Graham family giving a platform to the left-wing equivalent of Glenn Beck, in the way that Rupert Murdoch has done?
3) Both sets of elites feared their militant base. But while liberal elites feared that the student radicals and black radicals would attack them, today’s conservative elites fear that the angry Republican base will withdraw their support from them.
4) Violence was integral to the 1960s left, and especially to the Black Panthers. On the right, so far there’s plenty of paranoia but thankfully nothing remotely like the cult of revolutionary violence that wrecked so many lives in the years 1965-1975.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Of course, I know the answer to that question, just as well as you do. The answer is that they will never stop, every policy proposal, new program, nationalisation of industry, will never be enough. There will always be more to do, and the next goal of nationalization, regulation, controlling wrong thinking, etc.
Its an exorable push with the ultimate goal of the Totalitarian Socialist State, Utopian Visions.
balconesfault // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Well, clearly the left … as you define it, since only people on the left favor any forms of limited Socialism … are in favor of public condemnation of property under eminent domain to build critical infrastructure … public roads and highways … fire departments … the public school system … federal, state, and local parks … public libraries … public universities.
I don’t know any influential people on the left who favor Government ownership of all property and enterprise, which is why it is inaccurate and ignorant to use the label “socialist” for Democratic leadership, much less “Marxist”.
If favoring limited socialism makes one a socialist, then let’s start identifying who in America is NOT a socialist. It’s going to be a much easier to handle list.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I don’t know any influential people on the left who favor Government ownership of all property and enterprise — balconesfault
So if someone thinks that individuals should be able to own the clothes on their backs but nothing else, then they arent Marxists? Is that your position?
The US Constitution itself provides for Limited Socialism. The right of the Federal Government to levy taxes to pay for national defense.
However the US Constitution is a document that everyone can look at and agree or disagree with….and their are mechanisms to change it.
What is the Democrats Constitution? What limits are included in the Democrats Constitution on State power and authority? Are there any? Is just “we dont agree with the US Constitution will ignore it and “re-interpret” it as we see fit” change we can believe in?
If you would like to lift limits on government power, and the people are behind you, then the process for amending the Constitution are clearly laid out….and should be no problem with the support of the people. You can even ditch the who Constitution and write a new one…but that requires telling people what you are about, and not a nebulous emphemeral cloud of hopeful changiness, round and round she goes where she stops nobody knows!
Camille Paglia comments on this same phenomenon, here.
Obama’s healthcare horror
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/index.html
EscapeVelocity // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Racists in the Democrat Party
“Let’s have President Obama lead an honest discussion about the “No Whites Allowed” sign on Jackson’s home pictured above (and please do note that Jackson is an official Democrat Party and Obama campaign poll watcher, as well as an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee).”
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/02/the-new-black-panther-partys-teachable-moments-on-race/
balconesfault // Sep 4, 2009 at 1:15 pm
So if someone thinks that individuals should be able to own the clothes on their backs but nothing else, then they arent Marxists? Is that your position?
Nope – in a classical Marxist sense, “property” means those things that represent the means of production. Land. Factories. Not your clothes.
What is the Democrats Constitution? What limits are included in the Democrats Constitution on State power and authority? Are there any? Is just “we dont agree with the US Constitution will ignore it and “re-interpret” it as we see fit” change we can believe in?
Democrats have the same Constitution as the Republicans, best I can tell. The whole “ignore and re-interpret” thing is usually just playing the refs … though there certainly were some serious “ignore” things going on during the last Administration in the name of national security.
Hell, I’ve been having an argument with Ireign here over whether or not a Federal Mandate that individuals purchase insurance from the private sector would be constitutional. I don’t believe it is. I also don’t believe that it would be constitutional for the Federal Government to require me to pay money into a federally administered private investment account.
balconesfault // Sep 4, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Jackson’s sign is indeed reprehensible, particularly for someone who wants to play a role in the political process. I’m not sure the context that Obama should publicly bring it up – he only commented on the Gates incident when a reporter thought it more important to ask at his press conference than another question on how the Federal Government intends to expand its role in the massive portion of our economy dedicated to healthcare – but if he’s asked about it I certainly hopes he will be very critical of it.
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