We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. [Applause] We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness. [Applause] Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you.The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.Responding to a crisis of identity, Rush Limbaugh explains that "We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are because we make the mistake of assuming people know." And just basically who are you?
I defy anyone to extract an identity from the linked speech. Conservatives are for opportunity, but not equality of outcomes, but we are born equal, but we succeed or fail on our own merits, but conservatives will try to stop you from failing, but if you do, that's too bad, and we need everyone to succeed as an individual for the country to succeed, except for those who don't, because it's their fault, and the fault of the war on poverty, or . . . some such. The Donk is deluded by the allure of technocracy, by the notion of scientific government; the Gopster is a set of cultural phobias, affected regular-guy affinities, and catch phrases. It's probably appropriate that they draw their inspiration and spokespeople from the ever-more-irrelevant and anachronistic medium of radio.
The Donk complains that the Republicans are crass obstructionists. Would that it were true. The contemporary GOP wears the guise of obstructionism but lacks the wherewithal to oppose effectively. Superjesus Black Reagan rules the airwaves, and the supposed opposition is sequestered away in a chintzy hotel ballroom listening to C-list newsmedia celebrities extemporize around the posthumous legacy of
20 comments:
"I defy anyone to extract an identity from the linked speech. Conservatives are for opportunity, but not equality of outcomes, but we are born equal, but we succeed or fail on our own merits..."
He's also hopelessly bewildered on the subject of the pursuit of happiness. First of all, it's deeply weird that he put happiness at the center of the conservative project:
"Conservatives are naturally happy. We seek happiness. We pursue it."
"As I say, we want the best: Happiness for everybody."
Really? Since when? But then, having done it, he still can't make up his mind about it:
"We don't want to tell anybody how to live. That's up to you. If you want to make the best of yourself, feel free. If you want to ruin your life, we'll try to stop it, but it's a waste."
"Somebody says they want something that's bad for them, do you give it to them just to be nice? Or do you tell them, regardless of their age, no, you shouldn't have that? Well, it's none of your business. Maybe not. And then you back out of it. But you still have to have the ability to tell people what's right and wrong. And that's not authoritative. That's not authoritarian. And it's not trying to deny somebody a good time. It's not trying to interrupt somebody's hedonism, pleasure, it's about all of us with shared values trying to make sure that people live the highest quality lives they can. Ultimately, it's their decision as to what they do."
"Don't measure your success by how many people like you. Just worry about how they vote. And then at the end of the day how they live, but that's really none of your business once they close the doors."
Can the libertarians here make any sense out of this, or is just the drivel that it sounds like?
i'm fairly sure it was designed to be drivel. perhaps they saw the success of all things to all people in november and thought they could get in on the action.
or perhaps it's just rush "i blow rails of oxy on the regular...and i vote!" limbaugh?
The crucial difference between conservative and progressive ideologies is, well, the idea of progress. It's an impassable divide between rival conceptions of human nature and human potential. The vast bulk of what needs to be said in this connection has already been covered by Hobbes versus Locke and their respective followers.
The problem with Rush Limbaugh and most of CPAC's brand of conservatism, as I see it anyway, is that they almost inexplicably want to be loved and to be lovable, for the sake of it; they want to be "positive" and ebullient, but they wear Bobby Jindal's plastic smile. All (somewhat) well and good until it becomes clear that this positive outlook is pretextual and self-congratulatory, a retread of that horrible old question-begging Gospel of Wealth smugness, via Joel Osteen's "Exceeding Abundantly" theology. Yes, Jesus would indeed wear a Rolex, and hang with the "better" sorts, whom He And YHWH apparently favor, by dint of their current wealth and privilege. Hence, Rush et al form the equal opposite of the reflexively zero-sum-game class-warfare kvetchers.
Jindal really was amazing. "OK, so we have a trillion dollar spending bill to attack here. Is there a program that takes up a tenth of a percent of the total cost that even a Molotov-throwing anarchist would agree is necessary and useful? There is? Great." It doesn't even rise to the level of performance art.
It doesn't even rise to the level of performance art.
Oh, I don't know. I might say it surpasses it.
Well, ya know, volcanoes don't kill people, LAVA kills people.
So, wait, this is the best the R's got? A draft dodging drug addicted lip-frother and Governor Mortimer Snerd? Fuck, the Ds might as well start picking out wallpaper. There's gonna be in the white house a long time.
Ahem. "Thunderously loud"? With you there. Confused on the canon of their own religion? Sure. "Irrelevance," though? I probably wouldn't even believe that were I to see it.
Dogwhistle, dogwhistle, dogwhistle. Somewhat like the way Karl Rove and Dubya used the dogwhistle -- to insert religious references into superficially nonreligious speeches -- Rush and those like him use both sonic and subsonic frequencies.
Rush spends all day every day redefining generic terms such as "Freedom," "Liberty" and "Happiness" to his radio and print followers, in very specific ways which are advantageous to his Republican politico friends. E.g., "Freedom" means big corporations are free to pollute, and tax-free, but Mexicans aren't free to cross the border. "Happiness" means monetary greed as opposed to sexual permissiveness. That's the subsonic dogwhistle part; what he's saying is completely vacuous to you, IOZ, but it has very specific and concrete connotations to his loyal followers.
But Rush also blows his whistle in audible tones. The reason he keeps redefining words like "Freedom" is to use their noise to drown out intelligent debate. Like Dubya also used to. Stupid Democrats listen to Rush and think, "I don't like what Rush is saying, but I don't want to be perceived as anti-Freedom, so I can't attack him directly." It never occurs to them to offer a better definition of freedom, because Dems fundamentally don't want people to be free to drop out of the System any more than Republicans do.
Many Libertarians, I suspect, hear and understand Rush's dogwhistle, but they don't follow Rush because they recognize him as the politically connected toady he really is. They recognize Rush as part of the problem, not the solution. On the other hand, Libertarians seem to prefer people like Jindal or Ron Paul, who are so far out of the mainstream on certain subjects that they couldn't possibly be part of the Establishment, and therefore are guaranteed not to be part of the problem.
But IOZ, in my assumption you have raised up over these past two decades, 'twas ever thus regards this sofit-layered "conservatism" and its equally weak counterpart amongst "the Donks"--don't expect some "party to rise with zealous incredulity"--this Wonderland Drive world has further to go before such happens.
Mr. Daulton: Libertarians are Bobby Jindal folks?
Cüneyt: Not necessarily, and certainly not all of them. Libertarians are certainly, absolutely not a monolithic group. But I have heard that some of the things Jindal says resonate with some Libertarians. The Evil ones, anyway. Probably Jindal wasn't the best example I could have picked, but he's famous right now. I suppose I could have mentioned Lyndon LaRoche instead, but you see how my references get more and more obscure.
Okay. And totally agreed on them not being a monolithic group.
So can you tell me if there's any intersection between the Jindal libertarians, if any, and the blimp enthusiasts of the Ron Paul camp (who are, admittedly, a subset of the over all Paulite community)?
Yeah, yeah, fine, you got me, Cüneyt, I didn't hear or read Jindal's speech, nor do I have significant connections to real Ur-Libertarians... (all my conservative relatives are of the "fake-Libertarian-who-always-votes-Republican" variety).
I merely skimmed an article somewhere which said that some [not all] Libertarians were applauding Jindal's boldness in sticking to an anti-Government message despite the fact that 99.5% of the country wants the government to spend money to create jobs and fix infrastructure -- (because businesses aren't, and are instead firing people by the tens of thousands. This is not the same as saying that the public approves of the actual stimulus or bailout bills, but the article took that distinction as a given.) Of course I can't find that particular article in my browser history right now.
The intersection, if any, is among Libertarians who believe government should be abolished completely, drowned in a bathtub, etc. (Sometimes I refer to these as "Mad-Max Libertarians"). Neither Jindal nor Ron Paul is advocating the complete abolition of government, but both are advocating radical reductions in government at a time when the majority of the public is looking to government (rightly or wrongly) to protect them.
We're getting farther away from my original point. There isn't an explicit political connection between Rob Jindal and Ron Paul, there's only a contrarian one. My point was only that Libertarians spend _so_ much effort eschewing Big Government that SOME OF THEM, not all, only the Evil ones, they're ready to embrace and lionize spokesmen who, at present, don't have a snowball's chance of amassing the popular support necessary for the sweeping radical changes they are proposing.
I do think that Ron Paul speaks a lot of truth: he was 110% right, and prescient, on the financial crisis, and he says things about U.S. imperialism that Democrats will never admit, even to themselves. But, as you perhaps know from my past comments on this blog, I don't think it is possible for large numbers of humans to live without a regulatory government, no matter how efficient Capitalist markets are. (And they're often not.)
My viewpoint, however, does not necessarily imply that the real-life stimulus or bailout bills are recommendable or will be effective. Frankly I doubt it. I just think that we, collectively as a nation, could do a lot better, and that we can't not try. Because there will basically always be a government in one form or another, so it behooves us to try and make it the best one possible, not eradicate it. If we eradicate it, something worse will spring up in its place to fill the power vacuum, and that is my disagreement with the "Mad-Max Libertarians" [not all Libertarians] who will jump on anyone's bandwagon who preaches cutting government.
My point wasn't about Jindall or Ron Paul per se, only that SOME Libertarians will jump onto the bandwagon of anyone who preaches a less-government message, even at a time when upwards of 200 Million Americans are looking (rightly or wrongly) to the government for help.
Perhaps my original comment was a gross generalization of Libertarians, and perhaps you are a Libertarian who was offended by that. (What I remember of your past comments on this site doesn't bespeak a fixed ideology, and that avoidance is something I consider the mark of a good writer. _I_ certainly fail that test.) I apologize to you or any Libertarian who thinks I painted all Libertarians as Jindall or Ron Paul supporters. That wasn't my actual intention.
I was hoping my phrase "Libertarians seem to prefer..." had enough wiggle room to not be an overgeneralization, but apparently I failed.
I was hoping my phrase "Libertarians seem to prefer..." had enough wiggle room to not be an overgeneralization, but apparently I failed.
jesus christ, where was that thought before the unnecessary rant.
This is the Internet, baby! Click! Bang! Zoom! Post whatever's on your mind right now! If you have carefully-thought-out, scrupulously researched, well-crafted arguments with footnotes and sources, then go write a book that nobody will read.
No, no, that's the type of qualification I was looking for. And no offense taken.
And if my comments betray no fixed ideology, that may not be a sign of my wisdom, but a sign that my ideology is simply not fixed. I'm learning, or trying to.
Oh, and again, I discriminated between the blimponians and the mainstream Paul supporters (if, indeed, we might call any of them mainstream), but I appreciated your post all the same. And agreed: we can't not try. Of course, that's a whole other thing. "Whatarewegonnado" and all that. What it comes down to, for me, is that people who have a little, or have little, argue about what heaven's gonna look like, while the powerful merely agree to defend what they've already got. But I'm late for work and I'm getting into my utopian mentality.
So enough of that. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you taking the time to respond, even if my questions were nowhere near as deliberate as your answers.
Thank you for this last post. Because your questions were a bit terse, I was worried you were hostile to my point.
However this last post you wrote was memorable. I'm definitely gonna have to steal that phrase about the have-littles and Heaven, versus the powerful, in my discussions elsewhere!
You're quite welcome. And take any of my phrases, by all means. I may have my own particular stances, and on those issues we may differ, but above any of these individual positions is my belief that we ought to take stances, any stances, and hold opinions, any opinions, even as I realize that the vast majority of stances and opinions are facile, stupid, and that action outspeaks them all. "What are we going to do?" is a question I don't dismiss out of hand, even as I realize that action for action's sake is practically a state religion around here, and most "problem-solving" is merely an attempt to appear useful, or to validate fore-gone conclusions (which is a national pastime, incidentally).
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