Patterns That Connect

Obama vs. ISG: Yes Blood For Oil!

2006-12-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

On Dec 04, Chris Bowers wrote a post, ”The Two Obamas and Me, Part One” which contrasted the principle-driven Obama who first inspired tremendous netroots support with the compromise-driven Obama who now seems intent on demonizing the very people who helped get him his start. One example Chris cited of the second Obama was this:

In town-hall meetings, when those who opposed the war get shrill, Obama makes a point of noting that while he, too, opposed the war, he's "not one of those people who cynically believes Bush went in only for the oil."

Chis followed up:

Did anyone with any power every say that? Did any leading Democrats ever say that? Did any progressive or liberal of any public stature ever say that? If they did, I'd love to see the quote.

Well, now it appears that someone has come quite close to saying that: The Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG). Privatizing Iraq’s oil is one of their fundamental recommendations—regardless of what the Iraqis want. Democracy—well, that was always an afterthought.

The ISG is a center-right outfit, composed entirely of people who were wrong about Iraq. Anyone who opposed the war from the gitgo was simply not considered ISG material. As Glen Greenwald points out today (“The principal sin of the Baker-Hamilton Report”), their overall proposal is clearly to prolong US involvement, a position that the American people now soundly reject. Greenwald points to an AP poll:

Seventy-one percent said they would favor a two-year timeline from now until sometime in 2008, but when people are asked instead about a six-month timeline for withdrawal that number drops to 60 percent.

In defiance of these numbers, the ISG is attempting to once again redefine a “center” that’s an extreme minority position, so that the mainstream of American opinion can in turn be defined as “extremist,” “defeatist” and “off the table.” One part of that center, pointed out by author Antonia Juhasz (The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time) in an LA Times Op-Ed today, is the ISG’s “advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.” (More on this below.)

Barack Obama, of course, has helped make this happen. Every enabler of bipartisan rhetoric has helped make this happen. But Obama has a special role, since his early backers, those who helped him early when he needed it most, had every reason to suppose that he would be a powerful, eloquent, moral voice of leadership opposing the war. Instead, we’ve gotten a weathervane routine from him, as David Sirota wrote last June for The Nation:

Then there is the Iraq War. Obama says that during his 2004 election campaign he "loudly and vigorously" opposed the war. As The New Yorker noted, "many had been drawn initially by Obama's early opposition to the invasion." But "when his speech at the antiwar rally in 2002 was quietly removed from his campaign Web site," the magazine reported, "activists found that to be an ominous sign"--one that foreshadowed Obama's first months in the Senate. Indeed, through much of 2005, Obama said little about Iraq, displaying a noticeable deference to Washington's bipartisan foreign policy elite, which had pushed the war. One of Obama's first votes as a senator was to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her integral role in pushing the now-debunked propaganda about Iraq's WMD.

In November Obama's reticence on the war ended. Five days after hawkish Democratic Representative Jack Murtha famously called for a withdrawal, Obama gave a speech calling for a drawdown of troops in 2006. "Those of us in Washington have fallen behind the debate that is taking place across America on Iraq," he said. But then he retreated. On Meet the Press in January Obama regurgitated catchphrases often employed by neoconservatives to caricature those demanding a timetable for withdrawal. "It would not be responsible for us to unilaterally and precipitously draw troops down," he said. Then, as polls showed support for the war further eroding, Obama tacked again, giving a speech in May attacking the war and mocking the "idea that somehow if you say the words 'plan for victory' and 'stay the course' over and over and over and over again...that somehow people are not going to notice the 2,400 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at the Dover Air Force Base."

This is larger context for Obama’s remark dismissing “those people who cynically believes Bush went in only for the oil.” As Chris said, who are those people? I’ve gone to anti-war demonstrations, I’ve attended weekly peace vigils. I’ve talked with people carrying “No Blood For Oil” signs. Even I haven’t met anyone who “believes Bush went in only for the oil.” The point of those signs is not to claim that this was Bush’s only reason—that would be absurd. The signs are meant to point out a reason that the official discussion routinely ignores, and refuses to discuss, except to ridicule—just the way Obama did.

Of course, at a basic level, everyone knows that Iraq is about oil. There are only two reasons we originally got involved in that part of the world: Oil and to deny the Soviets a warm-water port. Israel only became important as a result of those first two reasons. Our oil obsession caused us to overthrow the Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1953—a promising democracy that we would give our eye teeth to have back today, at least, if we had any sense. Which, of course, we don’t. In Afghanistan, our anti-Soviet obsession caused us to team up with the most extremist elements of the Mujahadeen, and partner with bin Laden. The problems we face today are almost entirely of our own making—the result of narrow, short-sighted, knee-jerk responses to situations that were far less threatening to us than the situations we face today, situations our reactive policies have created.

But if oil is half the reason we’re in the Middle East to begin with, oil also plays a very specific role in this very specific war. We had both the President and Vice-President from the oil industry. We had all manner of other oil company connections, we had a huge imbalance in financial support for the GOP from the oil industry vs. alternative energy, we had the super-secret Cheney energy taskforce with maps of Iraq’s oil fields, we had promises that Iraq’s oil revenue would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction—the connections go on and on and on and on. To not talk about any of them is of necessity to not talk about the real reasons, true context, and political alignments that lead us into this war. And this, in turn, leads us to embrace a series of fairy tales, instead. First WMDs and Iraq’s mythical involvement in 9/11, then the absurd notion that Bush not only cares about democracy, but that that’s the reason we invaded Iraq in the first place—a reason that Bush himself strenuously opposed, until it was forced on him by the Iraqi people.

By ridiculing and misrepresenting those who refuse to ignore the link between oil and war—and war and death—Obama has paid his dues to join the Washington insider’s club. And from that perch, he now parades—much like John McCain—as a maverick outsider. (You know, like Frank Sinatra in the heyday of the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention. Or Peter Frampton at the time of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Slits.) The “maverick outsider” status absolutely depends on absolutely banishing real outsiders from even a moment’s notice, especially if they represent a majority of the American people.

In her Op-Ed, “It's still about oil in Iraq,” Antonia Juhasz, begins:

While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

Accomplishing this, Juhasz explains, would require re-writing Iraq’s constitution, something the Iraqi’s have resisted so far. She reviews some of the crucial backstory of this struggle before concluding:

The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political and economic support is contingent upon Iraq's government meeting certain undefined "milestones." It's apparent that these milestones are embedded in the report itself.

Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. Finally, the report unequivocally declares that the 79 total recommendations "are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation."

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies — presumably American ones — have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.

There is, quite simply, no way around it. The ISG report is a prescription for oil and empire on the cheap, in the face of growing, majority opposition. It is not a solution for “the Iraq mess” as perceived by the American public, with their naive faith in our “good intentions.” It is a solution for America’s elites faced with a severe recurrence of “Vietnam Syndrome” aka “democracy.”

You know, that thing we’re supposed to be fighting for in Iraq.

Where’s Obama?

So where’s Obama in all this? One thing’s for sure—he’s not front and center, denouncing the ISG for trying to do an end-run around the will of the American people. In fact, quite the opposite: he’s cheering it on...selectively, though without saying so.

While Bush is busy ignoring the ISG by picking and choosing which recommendations he will reject out of hand, Obama’s busy doing the same: ignoring the icky blood-for-oil provisions that he above all does not want to talk about, Obama said:

“In presenting a realistic view of how far the situation has deteriorated, the report avoids the partisan rhetoric that has characterized too much of this debate and offers a unique chance to forge a bipartisan consensus about how to move forward in Iraq.”

In other words, ignoring the blood-for-oil dimension of the war is absolutely crucial for maintaining the facade that what’s “bipartisan” in Versailles bears any resemblance at all to what’s non-partisan majoritarian in America. But Obama can’t actually say he’s ignoring the blood-for-oil aspect. That wouldn’t be ignoring it at all.

In the end, ironically, we discover that George Bush really is more honest and forthright. He rejects certain parts of the ISG, and he comes right out and says it. Obama—at least so far—has not been so honest. He hasn’t looked at the actual recommendations, and said, “Sure, blood for oil, fine with me!” But he hasn’t said he’s against it either.

After all, he’s never been one of those cynics. You know what I’m talking about. The ones who believe their own eyes.

Obama, MLK and Hegemony (A Departure From My Ongoing Series)

2006-12-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

Chris Bowers posted a very important frontpage story at MyDD last night, “The Two Obamas and Me, Part One”. In it, he drew a distinction between the Obama who first attracted widespread, enthusiastic netroots and grassroots progressive support, and post-Senate election Obama who has often reiterated rightwing stereotypes of the left, in order to position himself more favorably.

In the course of the comments, some counter-arguments were raise, many knee-jerk and fatuous, but some serious, and deserving of serious replies. Chris himself has said he will have more to say, and so I make no attempt to speak for him, or answer all the serious objections raised. Instead, what I want to do is add a perspective to reinforce where Chris is coming from, as I understand him, which is the same place I'm coming from on this. That perspective is the subject of an ongoing series I'm doing on hegemony, a complex concept that is nontheless deftly summarized as "a dominant ideology in drag as common sense."

In my view, the concept of hegemony is most useful in clarifying where Obama stands, and what he stands for. He is, in my view, a hegemonic figure in drag as a counter-hegemonic figure. Jump to the flip if you're interested in why.

Prologue: Why Is He Being So Mean?

I started my series on hegemony because I wanted to talk about the issue of political realignment, which I wanted to talk about as a way of framing the last election and the next. The history of political realignments (Jackson's election in 1824, Lincoln's in 1860, McKinnley's in 1896, FDR's in 1932) is a history of changing political discourse. But it's hardly the be-all and end-all of that phenomena, which is why I took up the series.

How does this relate to Obama, and the issues Chris raised? Simple: realignments, as I showed in “What A Dem Landslide Could Mean”, come about as a result of two consecutive wave elections in the House. But they culminate in a Presidential election. In most cases, the President involved is a charismatic, epoch-defining figure: Jackson, Lincoln, FDR. McKinnley was definitely the odd man out. Obviously, Obama has the potential to be such a figure as well. And his critics, such as Chis and I, are every bit as aware of that (perhaps even moreso) as his enthusiastic supporters.

The criticism I'm offering here is in terms of hegemony, in terms of the common sense face of a dominant ideology, and it finds Obama clearly lacking. But that's hardly the end of the matter, on at least two counts. Before explaining, I need to flesh out the idea of hegemony a little. Here’s how Wikipedia introduces the concept:

Hegemony

Hegemony... is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. The cultural control that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society.

Hegemony results in the empowerment of certain cultural beliefs, values, and practices to the submersion and partial exclusion of others. Hegemony influences the perspective of mainstream history, as history is written by the victors for a congruent readership. The official history of Communism, re-writing history, erasing people's names and images from official state photos, provides a richly-exampled arena of cultural hegemony.

In America, the passage of different groups from despised outsiders into accepted parts of the whole is not a challenge to the core of hegemonic power. The basic logic of group hierarchy is rearranged, revised, and given new form, but not rejected. We’ve still had just one Catholic President. The first Muslim elected to Congress was openly challenged to prove he is not a terrorist sympathizer or enabler. Blacks still fill our prisons. Innocent unarmed blacks are still murdered by our police. New Orleans is still a wasteland, fifteen months after Katrina. This is what “normal” looks like. Hegemony is alive and well.

As I said, this post criticizes Obama for failing to challenge hegemony. But that's hardly the end of the matter, on at least two counts. The first, more broadly, is that no break in party systems has truly challenged the core of hegemony. Jackson's populism was deeply racist, even Lincoln ran merely on a platform of restraining slavery's expansion while preserving the union, McKinnley was a great leap backward, and FDR saved capitalism from itself. In short, these breaks have somewhat redefined the hegemonic discourse, rather than challenging its very core. It would be unrealistic to expect any Presidential candidate to do more.

The second, narrower point is that Presidents can evolve. Lincoln and FDR are the most dramatic examples. Lincoln in 1860 was not about freeing the slaves. In a few short years, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. FDR came into office pledging to balance budgets, and eager to work closely with big business, but big business walked away from him, labor came to the fore, and balancing budgets proved impossibe--the recession of 1937-38 was the final proof of that.

And so, this criticism of Obama is hardly meant as an attempt to consign him to the dustbin of history. Despite whatever I say here, he may still turn out to be a remarkably progressive President. My darkest fears may not be realized. And yet, no one knowledgeable doubts that Lincoln was a better President and a better man because of Frederick Douglass urging him on. No one doubts that Eleanor Roosevelt had a similar influence on FDR. One need not be a hostile critic of such figures to be ahead of them, and lead them farther in the ultimate direction that history remembers them most favorably for.

Neither Chris nor I have a close or privileged relationship. It falls to us to be blunt and straightforward. But those more favorably inclined toward Obama ought to think long and hard about what we say, because it ill serves him to be comfortable with what he is and what he has done so far. If Lincoln or FDR had been, and had remained comfortable with themselves as they were when elected, history would not remember either of them kindly today.

Of course, I want much more than for history to think kindly of President Obama. I want more than just another realignment—though that is the bare minimum I think we need to survive the challenges of the century ahead. I want more than mere survival. I want renewal, reawakening, rebirth. I want a true challenge to the hegemonic order. And Obama excites many people because he seems to promise that. But it’s a promise he does not fulfill.

The Close Up

Put simply, I see Obama posturing as two things: (1) a uniter who (2) stands outside the conventional discourse and tells it like it is. He is, in short, the black, Democratic John McCain. The examples Chris cites are evidence that Obama is only a uniter within the bounds of hegemonic discourse. He is not interested in uniting everyone, though he uses pseudo-univeralist language. Nor is he interested in criticizing the conventional discourse. He just wants to goose it a little bit, create a little buzz while defining the outer limits of what's acceptable.

Chris cites examples regarding Obama on the war and on the role of religion. More has been written about Obama and religion at Talk2Action, which has an entire category, “Demonizing ‘Secularism,’” which neatly frames the problem with Obama. For example, Frederick Clarkson’s article from last July, “Barack Obama Steps In It” begins:

Senator Barack Obama's big speech at an event sponsored by Call to Renewal, a group headed by Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics: Why the Religious Right Gets it Wrong, and Why the Left Doesn't Get It -- has received very mixed reviews and is the buzz of the blogosphere. There is much in Obama's speech that hits the right notes regarding the role of religion in a democratic pluralist society, but the speech is indelibly marred by propagating one of the central frames of the religious right.

The Washington Post reported:
Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty...

At the same time, he said, "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square."

As a result, "I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy."

The problem here should be self-evident. Some of those responding to Chris’s post claimed that Obama was simply responding to a perception that was “out there” and that needed to be addressed. But here he is clearly propagating perceptions created by the theocratic right.

Furthermore, Obama did this at an event sponsored by Jim Wallis’s organization, and, as Wallis’s book title makes clear, his whole schtick is based on a triangulation strategy that assumes the basic truth of the rightwing frame.

Clarkson continued:

The controversy that has erupted in response to Senator Obama's speech has helped to catalyze some things Talk to Action colleague Bruce Wilson and I have discussed for some time. (He will undoubtedly have much to say about all this as well.)

Obama and Jim Wallis before him are wrong to scapegoat "secularists" for the problems mainstream Christians and others have had in finding their voices. They are also wrong to allege that non-religious people are somehow chasing religious expression from public life. It is long past time to call a halt to this nonsense. Let's start today.

But before we abandon, and begin to more formally oppose the frame, here is how it works: The religious right frames much of how they view politics in America as a struggle in America between Christianity and secular humanism; between faith and no faith; between religiosity and secularism. The words differ a bit depending on who is doing the talking, but the the frame is always the same. Indeed, it has been one of the central features of the religious right's rise to power for decades and has been articulated by every major leader from Jerry Falwell to Sun Myung Moon.

Naturally, this frame is false. There is no epochal political struggle between Christianity and secular humanism. The struggle is between rightwing theocrats, yearning for the good old days of the divine right of kings, when power flowed unambiguously from top down, and American secular democracy, based as it is on Locke’s social contract theory, in which legitimate power derives from the consent of the governed, and flows unambiguously from bottom up.

Next, Clarkson presents a long excerpt from one of the premier researchers into the religious right, and rightwing authoritarianism and conspiricism more generally. I quote it in full, together with a following remark by Clarkson. Together, these set up the discussion of hegemony:

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates writes that the conspiracy theory alleging that Christianity is under attack by "secular humanists," goes back several decades.
The idea that a coordinated campaign by "secular humanists" was aimed at displacing Christianity as the moral bedrock of America actually traces back to a group of Catholic ideologues in the 1960s. It was Protestant evangelicals, especially fundamentalists, who brought this concept into the public political arena and developed a plan to mobilize grassroots activists as foot soldiers in what became known as the Culture Wars of the 1980s.

A popular theologian named Francis A. Schaeffer caught the attention of many Protestants in a series of books and essays calling on Christians to directly confront sinful and decadent secular culture with its humanist values...

[Evangelical scholar] George Marsden argues that this new focus on secular humanism "revitalized fundamentalist conspiracy theory"... Two leading activists of the Christian right, Gary Bauer and James Dobson, called the battle pitting secular humanists against Christians over the moral foundation of America a "great Civil War of Values".

The idea of a conscious and coordinated conspiracy of secular humanists has been propounded in various ways by a variety of national conservative organizations, including the Christian Coalition (Pat Robertson), the Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly), Concerned Women for America (Beverly LaHaye), American Coalition for Traditional Values (Tim LaHaye), Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (Fred Schwarz), and the John Birch Society (Robert Welch).

By framing this set of claims as a conspiracy to provoke a "Culture War," conservative Christians transform political disagreements into a battle between the Godly and the Godless, between good and evil, and ultimately between those that side with God and those that wittingly or unwittingly side with Satan.

What is remarkable is that this basic frame has been internalized and propagated by many people who are unaffiliated with the religious right. Indeed it has been actively promoted by one of the leaders of the the revival of what is calling itself the religious left -- Jim Wallis.

That’s Hegemony In Action, Folks!

What Berlet has described is a longterm process of rightwing infrastructure-building and narrative propagation. What Clarkson has added is a comment about how this narrative has spread. Both can be understood in terms of the concept of hegemony, going beyond the introductory passage presented above. The chief theoretician of hegemony was Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist imprisoned by Mussolini, whose Prison Notebooks contain the most penetrating elaboration of the idea of hegemony. The Wikipedia entry on Cultural Hegemony elaborates further:

The analysis of hegemony (or "rule") was formulated by Antonio Gramsci to explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected, in industrialized Europe...

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs, workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support....

Gramsci did not contend that hegemony was either monolithic or unified. Instead, hegemony was portrayed as a complex layering of social structures. Each of these structures have their own "mission" and internal logic that allows its members to behave in a way that is different from those in different structures. Yet, as with an army, each of these structures assumes the existence of other structures and by virtue of their differing missions, is able to coalesce and produce a larger structure that has a larger overall mission....

Influence of Gramsci

Although leftists may have been the primary users of this conceptual tool, the activities of organized conservative movements also draw upon the concept. This was seen, for instance, in evangelical Christian efforts to capture local school boards in the U.S. during the 1990s, and thus be able to dictate curriculum. Patrick Buchanan, in a widely discussed speech to the 1992 Republican Convention, used the term "culture war" to describe political and social struggle in the United States.

From the above, it should be clear that rightwing theocrats have been waging their own “war of position” against what they see as a secular hegemony.

However, if we go back further in time, we discover that these movements have roots in specific theological traditions, laced with strands of racism and heresy, at war with other more mainstream theological traditions. “Secular humanism” as their enemy was a rather late arrival on the scene. And, of course, Sun Myung Moon is about as anti-Christ a kind of guy you could ever wish for.

Whatever their self-understanding is, the GOP has long known better: these are forces to be used and controlled. They “have their own ‘mission’ and internal logic that allows its members to behave in a way that is different from those in different structures,” but in the end they’re all part of the larger army, which is decidedly oriented toward serving Mammon, “big time” which is the “larger overall mission” they serve knowingly or not.

The GOP could turn out wrong in the end. The servant could replace the master. Hegemonic orders can fragment, due to their own internal contradictions. But so far, that has not happened, and theocratic right is best understood as part of the existing hegemonic order, notwithstanding its fantasies to the contrary.

OTOH, “secular humanists” are true outsiders, challengers to the hegemonic order simply by virtue of their relative immunity to all manner of religiously-framed narratives. It makes no difference how respectful of others’ religious beliefs we may be, the mere fact that we stand apart, outside the spell of true belief, makes us a potential source of trouble, difficult to anticipate and counter. More importantly, because of our outsider status, we make extremely convenient scapegoats, onto which all manner of sins may safely be projected.

When Obama buys into the theocratic frame, he effectively buries all the contradictions within it. He endorses the notion that the real dividing line is not within the Christian community, between diverse, but honest religiously-motivated believers, and an extremist political fringe, and instead propagates the extremists’ line that the dividing line is between all people of faith, and an intolerant secular minority, whose identity and very existence he never even bothers to specify. (Note the parallels to McCarthy, with his blank “list of names.”)

This is one of the most powerful manifestations of hegemonic discourse—the shifting of lines, the projecting of conflict points, the burying of true disputes, and the elevation of red herrings and scapegoats. The fact that no specific offenders are named only makes matters worse, not better. For if someone specific could be named, then they could—in theory at least—fight back, and dispute what is being said. But, in fact, there are no such figures, or, more properly, no one who takes such a position has anything remotely close to the power to enforce it, beyond deleting comments on their blog.

We’re talking about bogeymen, folks.

Obama’s Words, Again—And A False Equivalence With History

With this background behind us, let’s turn again to Obama’s words and their significance. A number of commentators on Chris’s MyDD story tried some version of psychologizing the whole thing away. Chris was just being “thin-skinned.” Or he was misinterpreting Obama, who was simply stating these positions in order to refute them. Chris and others pointed out this is hardly the way to frame political rhetoric.
Don’t Think of An Elephant, and all that. Another tack critics took was to praise the fact that no one specific was being named as an offender—no harm, no foul, the reasoning goes. The comeback was simple: he’s undermining the brand, not just of “progressives” or “secular humanists,” but more broadly, of Democrats:

blogswarm hit it perfectly:

Re: The Two Obamas and Me, Part One
It's not like he's naming any names.
Yes, he is naming and the name is Democrats. It isn't any one person, it is everyone else.

by blogswarm on Tue Dec 05, 2006 at 01:47:41 AM EST
Re: The Two Obamas and Me, Part One

because we're all alike -- one formula. come one, get thicker skin.

by Laurin from SC on Tue Dec 05, 2006 at 01:55:10 AM EST
....
Re: The Two Obamas and Me, Part One

Obama is the one saying that we are all alike -- except for him. That is the problem with triangulation, that is why the DLC lost every single major primary in 2006.

by blogswarm on Tue Dec 05, 2006 at 02:05:48 AM EST

This is precisely how hegemony works. Instead of developing your own institutions, your own analysis, your language, you accept those that are imposed on you. And perpetuate fighting with enemies pre-selected for you—enemies who ought to be your allies.

Some claimed that this was really no different from Bush using the phrase “compassionate conservative.” Laurin from SC wrote:

Bush's theme of "compassionate conservatism" clearly implied that standard conservatism wasn't, in fact, compassionate. Why else would there be a reason to distinguish his particular brand of conservatism?

It's the same strawman technique is a slightly different form of delivery: obliquely communicate the stereotype and how the given candidate rises above that stereotype. I'll grant you that Bush's "compassionate conservatism" rhetoric better nested the conservative strawman than Obama's outright stenciling of the liberal strawman.

But the idea is the same.

However, it’s not the same—although it did rankle Dobson and some others at first. First, an implied criticism is not the same as an overt one. Corporations sell “New, Improved!” products all the time, untroubled by the concern that it implies their previous products were inferior and old-fashioned. They sell “Low-Fat,” “Low-Cal” and “Low-Carb” products, unconcerned that people will shun their standard product line.

But that’s only part of what’s wrong with this false equivalence. You can’t understand a phrase in isolation from purposes it was created for, especially when it’s part of a larger, carefully-crafted narrative. To get the full picture, we need to look beyond mere words themselves to the part they play in a larger hegemonic project—that of rewriting both secular history and the core of Christian religion.

The idea of “compassionate conservatism” came from Marvin Olasky, who peddled the idea that the impoverished rat-infested slum-dwelling masses of the late 1800s weren’t really poor, because their lives were filled with God, but then the welfare state came along, gave them food stamps, housing assistance and the like, and turned them into lost souls. It’s nonsense, of course. Private charity, much of it church-based, simply couldn’t cope with the magnitude of need in the late 1800s. That’s why state-level welfare services appeared in the early 1900s, followed by federal services during the Great Depression. What’s more, no level of government welfare service—federal, state or local, has ever prevented private charity from continuing.

More insidiously, however, Olasky’s claim amounts to this: the poor are poor because they lack Godliness. The wealthy and middle-classes are more Godly than the poor, and they can help the poor by sharing a bit of their Godliness with them. It’s hard to imagine a more insulting, anti-Christian belief system. This is precisely what the Scribes and Pharisees believed. Jesus would have nothing to do with it. His mission was to the poor and the outcaste. They were the children of God. The wealthy and middle-class were the ones bereft of true Godliness—precisely the opposite of what Olasky claims.

The perversion of Christianity into its exact opposite (“Who would Jesus bomb?”) is a sure sign of hegemony at work. So, too, is the recasting of wretched 1890s slum-dwellers into happy Holy campers, and the New Deal into a wholesale attack on the poor. It’s not enough to just look at single phrases in isolation, one has to examine the whole narrative project of which they are a part.

Of course, most folks have never heard of Olasky’s work. Why should they? Once his work had laid the foundations, Bush’s money-fueled political machine soon left Olasky in the dust. The media never even questions where the idea of “compassionate conservatism” came from, much less what it means. But there was no way to tell in advance that this sort of super-marketing campaign would take over. Hegemonic narrative rewriting goes on all the time, never knowing when one effort will get a tremendous boost, a boost that may even make most of the original work involved utterly superflous. Still, a very large core of activist true believes have heard of Olasky, have accepted his grotesque fairy tales as gospel, and have mobilized to take advantage of all the faith-based pork that Bush could manage to send their way.

Indeed, the fact that commentators at MyDD are ignorant of all this history only goes to show how effective the machinery of hegemony is. If the folks at MyDD don’t know this, then who in the world does? Not very many people, you can bet on it. Even fewer know the cultural logic that connects “compassionate conservatism” to authoritarianism, as outlined by Ira Chenus in the article “‘Faith-based initiatives’ Signal Authoritarian Trend”, which draws parallels back to 1820’s America, when the old established lines of social authority came to be increasingly difficult to discern.

In contrast to the obscure backstory of “compassionate conservatism,” how many people have heard the secular-bashing memes that Barack Obama repeats? And how much backstory do they need? This is one of the essential functions of hegemony: to bury its own contradictions, and advance manufactured ones it can pin on rouge elements, external enemies and internal corrupters. Call it “the blame game.” Hegemonic discourse plays it all the time. Except, of course, for those rare occasions where blame-shifting just won’t work. That’s when you get the post-Katrina vapors over “playing the blame game.” Any other time, it’s job one.

King vs. Obama

Amongst other things, Obama said, "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." But who ever did such a thing? Quite the opposite. What we’d like is for believers to bring their religion into their politics, rather than bring their politics into their religion. And no one illustrates this point better than Martin Luther King, a true counter-hegemonic exemplar who could teach Barack Obama lessons till the cows come home. Consider, for example, what King had to say about the Vietnam War, and about God’s judgement:

Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be. A sort of the policeman of the world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems like I can hear God saying to America, “you [America] are too arrogant. If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power and…place it in the hands of a nation that does not even know my name, be still and know, that I’m God.

And it isn’t easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, some times, it means you walk the streets, with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means loosing a job, it means being abused, and scarred. It may mean having a 7-8 year old child ask,” Daddy why do yo have to go to jail so much?” I’ have… learned that being a follower of Jesus Christ, means taking up the cross. My Bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. For the crown we wear there is a cross that we must bear. Let us bear it, Bear it for truth. Bear it for Justice. Bear it for Peace.

That’s what real God-talk and real progressive talk, and real counter-hegemonic discourse sounds like.

And I haven’t heard anything remotely resembling that from Barack Obama. Have you?

What Would Real Transformation Look Like?

It may seem terribly unfair to hold Barack Obama up to the example of Martin Luther King. But he asked for it. He’s the one who doesn’t want to be judged by the standards of mere mortal politicians, who muck around getting bills passed, and pursuing other time-wasting tasks. King did not adapt himself to the hegemonic discourse of his day. And it wasn’t just about Civil Rights. His commitment to non-violence was even more out-of-step. After all, even the Eisenhower State Department knew that segregation was a loser in the Cold War struggle for Third World credibility. Civil Rights was the way to go. But non-violence? Sure, it was a great relief, tactically. But King actually took it seriously. And eventually that meant coming out against the Vietnam War. The longer you look at the examples of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, the less and less you see in common between the two—at least since Obama joined the US Senate.

I don’t expect Obama to be Martin Luther King, but a few lessons could surely be learned. Such as:

(1) Don’t accept your adversaries’ terms of debate. (See, for example, King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”)
(2) Don’t hesitate to explain your thinking in detail. (Again, see, “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”) If people take you seriously as a leader, they should want to walk a mile in your shoes. They should be eager for it. Giving them pablum instead is a grave disservice to yourself as well as them.
(3) Don’t be afraid to reach unpopular conclusions. You gain far more enduring, substantial support by going where reason, conscience, and spiritual guidance take you than by worrying about what others will say. Be in it for the long haul, and you will haul others along.

To be honest, I don’t expect Obama to come anywhere near these lessons. But those who are supporters of his ought to think long and hard if it isn’t very much in his interests, their interests, and the interests of America’s future for him to be confronted with these lessons in a way that he is willing to hear. Real transformation would be a politician willing to take a long, hard look at how he’s fallen short—after all, we’ve all fallen short—and what he can do to redress it.

Hegemony Is The Enemy—Pt2: Definition

2006-12-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

Although somewhat complicated, and somewhat debated, I like to put the concept of hegemony in a nutshell as “a dominant ideology in drag as a common sense.” It’s a very stripped-down way of putting it, but I think it suits our times. The concept is important precisely because it covers so much, and points to a common functionality across a wide range of topics and issues—the whole range of dominant ideology, and the opposing views it seeks to render as more or less “unthinkable,” as readily dismissable at the very least.

In this installment of my “Hegemony is the Enemy” series, I’ll delve a bit deeper into the concept to justify that description, while providing enough information to draw other conclusions as well. The most important figure in describing, defining and promoting the importance of hegemony is Antonio Gramsci, and it’s his concept that I, too, find most compelling. However, his thought is extremely complex, and wedded to a developmental perspective steeped in European history. I make no pretense to capturing that complexity in my definition. Indeed, the very act of stripping it down suits it for adopting an entirely new framework, as we’ll see in future instalments.

Wikipedia starts with a fairly broad definition:

Hegemony

Hegemony... is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. The cultural control that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society.

Hegemony results in the empowerment of certain cultural beliefs, values, and practices to the submersion and partial exclusion of others. Hegemony influences the perspective of mainstream history, as history is written by the victors for a congruent readership. The official history of Communism, re-writing history, erasing people's names and images from official state photos, provides a richly-exampled arena of cultural hegemony.

Note, this definition speaks of group dominance “with or without the threat of force.” Hegemony is most effective when no one even needs to think of force. Where there is no battle, nothing can be lost. Yet, when force is used, Gramsci makes the point that the greater the use of force, the greater the appeal to consent.

Wikipedia continues:

Theories of hegemony

Theories of hegemony attempt to explain how dominant groups or individuals (known as hegemons) can maintain their power -- the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate ones to accept, adopt and internalize their values and norms. Antonio Gramsci devised one of the best-known accounts of hegemony. His theory defined the State by a mixture of coercion and hegemony, between which he drew distinctions; according to Gramsci, hegemony consists of political power that flows from intellectual and moral leadership, authority or consensus, as distinguished from mere armed force.

Recently, critical theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have re-defined the term "hegemony" as a discursive strategy of combining principles from different systems of thought into one coherent ideology.

I’ve already addressed the “combining principles from different systems” in the prelude post for this series. I will therefore concentrate on Gramsci.

This section can lead to a somewhat mistaken understanding of Gramsci’s concept, developed in his Prison Notebooks, written during his imprisonment by Mussolini (1926 till his death in 1937). (A great deal of his writings are available online here.) Coercion and hegemony are not entirely separate categories for Gramsci, nor is he exclusively concerned with defining the Sate. He speaks of state-forming processes, for example, as well as relations within and between classes.

A brief taste of the complexity of Gramsci’s thought can be found here [“14 Major Issues or Dimensions or Meanings of Hegemony”]. Without going into too much detail, I want to extract a few significant points. One is a passage from Gramsci that reads:

"The 'normal' exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority....

The next major issue after that passage is titled “VI. Domination Without Intellectual and Moral Leadership is Not Hegemony” It reads in full:

Gramsci discusses the Piedmont situation in which social groups emerged that wanted to dominate, but not to lead; he says that this is not a situation of hegeomy (pp. 104=106): ie, "It is one of the cases in which these groups have the function of 'domination' without that of 'leadership': dictatorship without hegemony." (106).

Thus, the relationship to force is complex, and mere domination doesn’t equate with hegemony.

While there are certainly considerable subtleties not fully explored, the Wikipedia entry on Cultural Hegemony is largely correct in stating:

The analysis of hegemony (or "rule") was formulated by Antonio Gramsci to explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected, in industrialized Europe. Marx and his followers had advanced the theory that the rise of industrial capitalism would create a huge working class and cyclical economic recessions. These recessions and other contradictions of capitalism would lead the overwhelming masses of people, the workers, to develop organizations for self-defense, including labor unions and political parties. Further recessions and contradictions would then spark the working class to overthrow capitalism in a revolution, restructure the economic, political, and social institutions on rational socialist models, and begin the transition towards an eventual communist society. In Marxian terms, the dialectically changing economic base of society would determine the cultural and political superstructure. Although Marx and Engels had famously predicted this eschatological scenario in 1848, many decades later the workers of the industrialized core still had not carried out the mission.

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs, workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support....

Gramsci did not contend that hegemony was either monolithic or unified. Instead, hegemony was portrayed as a complex layering of social structures. Each of these structures have their own “mission” and internal logic that allows its members to behave in a way that is different from those in different structures. Yet, as with an army, each of these structures assumes the existence of other structures and by virtue of their differing missions, is able to coalesce and produce a larger structure that has a larger overall mission....

Influence of Gramsci

Although leftists may have been the primary users of this conceptual tool, the activities of organized conservative movements also draw upon the concept. This was seen, for instance, in evangelical Christian efforts to capture local school boards in the U.S. during the 1990s, and thus be able to dictate curriculum. Patrick Buchanan, in a widely discussed speech to the 1992 Republican Convention, used the term "culture war" to describe political and social struggle in the United States.

Clearly (as Pat Buchanan illustrates), one does not have to agree with Marx or Gramsci’s aims to see the broader sense in this analysis, and generalize it to other situations. One reason Marx or Gramsci’s thinking can seem alien is the distance we have come, partly because of the struggles they described and influenced. The impoverishment of 19th century workers is so remote from our experience, it is difficult to grasp. The very threat of revolution was one of the most powerful factors in changing that—a dialectical development in its own right. Yet, an echo of Gramsci’s analysis clearly seems to fit the way in which the largely Democratic, production-oriented, urban working class of the 1930s and before became the increasingly Republican, consumption-oriented suburban middle class of the 1950s and later.

Or, for a more striking example, during the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of poor whites rushed off to fight and die for the right of wealthy plantation-owners to own slaves—slaves whose material conditions and interests were much closer to their own than the plantation owners’ were. This is a clear example of hegemony, directly analogous to what motivated Gramsci’s original analysis. The same dynamic persists to this day, with the White South a bastion of working and middle-class support for elites they have little in common with materially, arrayed against blacks (and other, more recent additions) with whom they have a great deal in common.

Martin Luther King, Jr. touched on this phenomena in his speech, The Drum Major Instinct:

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."

Now that's a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can't hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out. (Amen)

Of course, things have changed since then. Those racist white jailers are all Republicans nowadays. And they aren’t all in the South. And isn’t always racism. But it’s always something. And that’s what What’s The Matter With Kansas is all about: hegemony, as opposed to people’s real material interests. The cause of it, and the countering of it both involve what Gramsci talked about, a “war of position,” a “culture war” in which each side “seek[s] to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten” their particular type of consciousness, analysis and theory, and inspire (literally or figuratively, revolutionary) political organization.

Described in these terms, the past 30-40 years has seen a largely one-sided culture war, as conservative elites have created a vast network of their own institutions to gain a dominant voice: Think tanks to dominate political discourse; their own political media (as well as infiltrating and undermining the existing news media); their own anti-modernist mass organizations, continuously organized because their goals are never achieved, and—both by taking over school boards and by setting up their own schools, their own educational institutions. In place of the metropolitan capitalist class of the 1950s and 60s, which had accepted the welfare state, big labor and big government as facts of life, and adopted norms in which CEOs made no more than 20-30 times that of low-end workers, we have a far more rapacious capitalist class that never accepted the New Deal, the Progressive Era, or even, arguably, the Civil War, the Constitution or the Magna Charta. And while that new old capitalist class has been gaining power, the old one—and the political institutions fostered under it, even in opposition—has largely slept through the changes. Indeed, the more unmistakable the changes have become—since Clinton’s impeachment for a blowjob, Bush’s theft of the 2000 election, and our descent toward authoritarianism since 9/11—the more fiercely the old institutions and their inhabitants have clung to their last shreds of sleep. We hear it again in the attempts to deny the message of the last election, in calls for the Democrats to “move to the center” and above all, to be civil, and not rock the boat, as Senator-elect Webb seems to have done, simply by refusing to kiss Bush’s ring. Indeed, it is almost impossible to tell where the denial of the old order leaves off, and the denial of the new order begins.

The end of denial is waking to the fact of an ongoing culture war as a war of position. We need to build up our institutions, our counter-hegemonic institutions—both online and off. And so what if they attack them? Indeed, we should be quite worried if they do not. If sociopathic monsters think we are reasonable, we are in big, big trouble.

A Final Word

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci wrote

"Undoubtedly the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed - in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic- corporate kind. But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential..."

Such a notion seems downright quaint today. Hegemony as we’ve experienced under Bush makes no such compromises whatever. Did Enron give its stolen money back? Did Haliburton? I cite this quote to underscore, in another way, how much has changed since Gramsci wrote, how much there is a need to draw on his insight, but not be chained to its formulations. Which sets the stage for our next installment.

Hegemony Is The Enemy--Intro

2006-11-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

With the election behind us, the task before us is enormous, more enormous than most folks realize. Political scientists describe American political history in terms of a series of “party systems,” which are divided from one another by decisive breaking points, known as “realigning elections.” The last universally agreed upon realigning election happened in 1932. While things have changed enormously since then, the Republicans were never able to dominate the political landscape with sweeping congressional majorities the way that Democrats were. The New Deal Party System crumpled, but did not fold.

And yet, that system is held in universal disdain by the punditocracy, even as evidence and rational discourse is held in disdain by the media generally. What has happened is the elite repudiation of the New Deal—an accommodation with the working [and middle] class necessitated by collapse of capitalism—even though the people still support it.

The elite repudiation can be understood in terms of the concept of hegemony. Whole books have been written about it, but basically it’s a $10 word meaning “a dominant ideology in commonsense drag.” This post sets up a series on hegemony, devoted to clarifying the battles ahead.

The Basic Thesis

My basic thesis is simple: The New Deal Party System was based on saving capitalism from itself. Only part of the capitalist class ever agreed to it, however. Once saved, capitalism eventually set about trying to destroy the New Deal, returning us to a pre-New Deal set of assumptions, gussied up a bit to look like something new. To win, we must successfully fight back, and meld what still works from the New Deal Party System with new ideas, new insights, new approaches to deal with the very different world we face in the 21st Century.

To do this successfully, we need to step back and see the really big picture. Big enough that global warming—saving the planet—is just one piece of the puzzle. That’s where the understanding of hegemony comes in. It’s the big-picture original of what Thomas Frank was struggling with in What’s the Matter With Kansas—it’s what helps explain why dirt poor Southern whites died by the thousands to preserve their oppressors right to own slaves.

If we understand hegemony, we will be much better able to understand what’s at stake in the battles before us—be they big or small. Above all, we will have a much better foundation for (1) strategizing on legislation, (2) strategizing on the 2008 elections, (3) strategizing on other forms of activism, (4) strategizing on coalition-building and (5) strategizing on institution-building.

Plan of This Diary

This is a “get your toes wet” diary. I’m going to talk a bit about the big picture, a little bit about some current buzz, and little bit about what’s in store for the series. I won’t be looking back into the roots of understanding hegemony, as I originally planned for this diary. I did enough of that to get started in my prelude post, "Hegemony Is The Enemy--Prelude--Milton Friedman", and I’ll go into greater depth in the next installment in this series. For now, I want to give some sense of the scope involved—the big picture view—and how readily it connects with ongoing concerns.

In other words, I want to answer the question, “Why bother?” And I want prepare folks for my forward-looking approach, which involves recasting the idea of hegemony in terms of a much more recent social science theory of group dominance developed in the 1990s, as well as drawing on other recent developments in cognitive science.

Three Aspects of Hegemony

I’m going to be concerned with three major aspects of hegemony (present in Gramsci’s formulation) which, conveniently, are all parts of a recently developed theory of group dominance, known as social dominance theory (SDT), which I’ve written about before, here for example. I’ll talk more about SDT and hegemony after my next planned post of this series, which will dig into the concept itself in more depth. For now, I just want to introduce the three parts, without talking in detail about how they fit together. These are:

(1) Narratives that shape and express our commonsense perceptions, rendering some ideas inherently more acceptable than others, some ideas virtually unthinkable, and other ideas virtually unquestionable. Some such narratives are quite clearly political: “Democrats are weak on defense,” for example. Or “America was founded as a Christian nation.” Others are more cultural: the suburbs as a refuge of safety and normalcy, for example (for a rather successful counter-hegemonic narrative, see Desperate Housewives.) There are an extraordinary variety of hegemonic narratives, and I won’t pretend to deal with all the kinds that are out there. I will, however, work to illuminate some examples, and encourage others to join in as well.

(2) Institutions that perpetuate hegemony. Most of these—such as the media—may also present challenges to hegemony (again, see Desperate Housewives), so I’m not trying to play a big game of heroes and villains. But some—such as rightwing think-tanks—are very heavily weighted in favor of maintaining hegemony. Institutions perpetuate (or challenge) hegemony directly via the narratives they promote (or oppose), as well as by changing (or resisting change to) facts on the ground. They also influence people via direct experience.

(3) Individual attitudes, which are influenced in various ways by institutions and narratives, and also influence them in turn, though generally in a less organized and effective manner.

I’ll have a good deal more to say about how these three aspects function and interact. But I’d like to point out one thing as an example: The vast majority of Americans support the welfare state at the level of individual attitudes (#3 above). The welfare state is one of the major defining institutions (#2 above) of our political system, and because it counters the power of private capital, and privately-controlled charity, it is a powerful hedge against hegemonic power (although, of course, it also serves hegemonic functions as well). Yet, at the level of hegemonic narratives (#1 above), several things can be observed. First, conservative support for the welfare state, although actually quite extensive, is virtually never acknowledged. Second, support for the welfare state is generally not associated with liberalism—except for use in attacking liberalism, such as calling singer-payer health care “socialized medicine.” Indeed, economic populism generally is not associated with liberalism, except for use in attacks. Third, “liberalism” is hegemonically defined in terms of the most sharply-contested, cutting-edge social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage.

Thus, following the Democrat’s sweeping victory earlier this month, there was talk about how the new liberal Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, would steer away from a liberal agenda, and instead concentrate on mainstream centrist agenda items, such as raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage, of course, is one of the key aspects of New Deal liberalism. Yet, precisely because it is so widely popular, the hegemonic discourse has virtually severed any connection between liberalism and the minimum wage. Indeed, it is openly presented in opposition to a “liberal agenda.”

This is hardly an isolated example. The very notion of a “liberal media” depends upon severing liberalism from its economic dimension, as does the attempt to identify conservatism with “the little guy,” embattled by “liberal elites.” Historically, liberalism has concerned itself with the expansion of freedom, opportunity, and social equality. The expansion of economic opportunity provided by the welfare state was the launching pad from which the modern civil rights and women’s rights movements took off. Severing that historical connection in the popular consciousness has been one of the chief aims of rightwing activists seeking to restore the hegemonic dominance of private capital.

A Little Example of What “Hegemony” Can Help Us Do

I’d like to take a few of current events to illustrate how the concept of hegemony gives us a more unified understanding of what’s going on. I’ll discuss a couple very briefly, and then one at greater length.

First, consider Glenn Greenwald’s somewhat oddly-titled post, "The meaninglessness of tenure," about the conservative attack on the term “Christianist,” put in play by libertarian conservative Andrew Sullivan. As Greenwald points out, the term is direct parallel to “Islamist,” a term widely used by the very people attacking Sullivan for his use of “Christianist.” Both terms refer to those trying to impose their religious beliefs onto others, using the power of the state. And yet, the attacks on the term “Christianist” even go so far as calling use of the term “hate speech”:

UPDATE IV: What makes Althouse and Reynolds' claim here so particularly dishonest is that their ideological comrade, Hugh Hewitt, previously made the same argument -- that Sullivan's use of the term "Christianist" is "deeply offensive." Hewitt was just as petulant and hysterical as Reynolds was, labelling the term "hate speech." In response, Sullivan explained exactly what the term means and what it does not mean:
Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist.

While Greenwald does a superb job of eviscerating the attacks blow-by-blow, he doesn’t discuss the big picture here. What we’re seeing is an attempt to suppress consciousness, suppress awareness, by suppressing use of a word to name a troubling phenomena. This is the very essence of how hegemony is maintained—by sanctifying some words, demonizing others and suppressing still others that might help expose the sanctifying/demonizing game.

Second, consider tristero’s post at Hullabaloo, "Advocating War If You Haven't Served," which takes on yet another attempt to delegitimize the “chickenhawk” label—this time by Kevin Drum. The term “chickenhawk” is one of those rare counter-hegemonic terms with extraordinary resonance and power, so it’s no wonder that hegemonic discourse demands its undoing—even moreso, perhaps, than “Islamist.” The fact that Kevin Drum should engage in this policing just goes to show how deeply hegemonic thought penetrates. In response, tristero writes:

I don't object in general to people who advocate war who haven't served. I object to the specific situation we have in regards to Bush/Iraq. I strongly object to the chickenhawks for their warped attitude in regards to this particular war. It is not merely that they are advocating war without having suffered the consequences. It is their loopy, ungrounded-in-reality enthusiasm for this war that I find revolting, an attitude that minimizes war's horrors rather than focusing on them, as any responsible person would.

Chickenhawks rarely if ever try to make the case that as awful as the sufferings of war are for everyone involved, reluctantly, this war is necessary. That is because there simply is no case to be made, never has been. Instead the chickenhawks are happy to go to war; rather than acknowledge that sometimes war is a solemn, unavoidable obligation, we hear about Grand Global Strategies or that Saddam was working with al Qaeda, or war is some kind of of post 9/11 therapy. And the chickenhawk discourse descends rapidly to the moral sewer, where a demented John Podhoretz will blithely talk about how the biggest mistake at the beginning of Bush/Iraq was that "we" didn't kill enough young Iraqis. (The biggest mistake at the beginning of the war was starting it.)

But the chickenhawks go even further than just excitedly embracing the prospect of waging war against Iraq for no reason. They have the unmitigated gall to denounce everyone who opposed Bush/Iraq as naive, as traitorous, as third-rate minds, as not really comprehending the nature of the threat, and so on. They are perfectly willing to describe the tens of millions of people who marched in February '03 in opposition to the war as "objectively pro-Saddam," a remark as utterly ignorant as high-five enthusiasm to fight a war is.

In short, it is the lack of even the slightest comprehension of what war really is, combined with their belligerent, dismissive arrogance that makes the question of the chickenhawks' own willingness to serve in the Bush/Iraq war a more than fair question.

In short, no one ever called FDR a “chickenhawk”—and for good reason. He knew that war was a bloody horror, that it required sacrifice by all, and he was willing to set ideology aside in order to fight it. He differed from the chickenhawks on all three counts. The term was never intended to apply to the likes of him. Indeed, in its origins it was not about people who had simply, passively, not served, and then advocated war on Iraq. It was about people who had actively worked hard to escape service, and then made support for the Iraq war a test of patriotism, demonizing all opposition—including, of course, the opposition of combat veterans who had taken the chickenhawks’ places on the battlefield.

Finally, the event I’d like to discuss at more lengths is Tom Edsall’s debut New York Times Op-Ed, "The Struggle Within", already discussed on the front pages of MyDD and DKos. Edsall is a big cheese of Beltway journalism—longtime writer on national politics for the Washington Post—and the writer of “serious books.” His latest, rather ill-timed, is Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power.

Now, to be fair, the description of Edsall’s book—which I have not read—does not necessarily sound silly at all, despite the Republican’s recent thumping. Edsall is correct that Republicans are attempting the first deliberately engineered political realignment in our history. He is also correct that it has many different aspects—as members of the blogosphere have long and repeatedly been pointing out, while Edsall’s journalistic brethren have been otherwise occupied taking dictation. Judging from the book description, some of the same territory was covered by an excellent book that I have read, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. But there is apparently more to Edsall’s thesis—more which makes him think that the Dems are in deep trouble and in need of changing their ways, even after the GOP’s thumping earlier this month.

Greg Mitchell, the Editor of Editor and Publisher, has written one of his super-sharp pieces on Edsall’s NTY debut, “Despite Election Results, Edsall Still Sees 'Red'”. In it, Mitchell writes:

So what does he do on Saturday? He offers advice to the Democrats on how they can avoid certain disaster for the party and stop trudging along as “No.2.” He also predicts that liberalism is “dead” and “rigor mortis” will soon set in, and the party as a whole must undergo a “painful transformation.” This comes on the heels of the Democrats’ national triumph, and it comes from a man who in his recent book was prescient enough to write, "The Republican Party holds a set of advantages, some substantial and some marginal,” meaning that "the odds are that the Republican Party will continue to maintain, over the long run, a thin but durable margin of victory."

Whoops.

Talk about bad timing. Just weeks after the release of Edsall’s book, the GOP lost that predicted edge in the House, the Senate, statehouses around the country, and governorships. It’s amazing they still kept their majority at FoxNews. The leader of their party now sits in the White House with a 31% approval rating. Yet here is Edsall, the ace prognosticator, dispensing wisdom to Democrats.

Giving Edsall the benefit of the doubt, especially in light of Off-Center, here’s what seems to be going on: The GOP really has tried to engineer a political realignment. This is not really news on the blogosphere. But Edsall’s vision is selective, and is particularly skewed by his Beltway (hegemony central) perspective. Many of the arguments he advances, which Mitchell notes, are typical examples of hegemonic discourse—that is, they are Beltway “common sense” [aka “conventional wisdom”] that is heavily shaped by ideology. Some examples from Mitchell’s column:

(1)

Liberalism is ‘dead’ and ‘rigor mortis’ will soon set in, and the party as a whole must undergo a “painful transformation.”

Pundits have been saying this ever since McGovern lost in 1972—no, check that. They’ve been saying it ever since the Supreme Court ruled most of the First New Deal unconstitutional, before the Second New Deal and FDR’s landslide re-election in 1936. As I’ve noted before, liberalism is very popular with people, even if the label is not. The same has been true for as long as polls have been taken.

(2)

Edsall was so eager to sell his new book that he appeared recently on rightwing radio host Hugh Hewitt's program, where he admitted that the mainstream media has an “overwhelmingly” strong liberal bias -- making the job for his former colleagues in the industry so much easier -- and estimated that Democrats outnumber Republicans in newsrooms by 15 or 25 to 1. This margin is not sustained by a single survey, even the slanted ones frequently cited by Hewitt and has brethren.

Of course, that’s why the media cites conservative think tanks much more often than it cites progressive ones. It’s all those Democrats trying to cover their tracks. Hegemonic discourse often works by repeating partial truths ad nauseum, while never even whispering the other parts of the truth.

(3)

In his book, Edsall paints the Democrats as hapless and disorganized and forever outfoxed by Republicans on the campaign trail.

Even much of the blogosphere has bought into this one. Of course, the Democrats are disorganized. But they’re always been disorganized. They were disorganized back in 1936, when FDR won every state in the union except Maine and Vermont. Republicans have money and organization. Democrats have people and passion. That’s how it’s always been. Hegemonic discourse often works by repeating partial truths ad nauseum, while never even whispering the other parts of the truth. (Is there an echo in here?)

(4)

In the book, Edsall continually mocks the Democrats’ “elitist” ways, declares that its candidates' attempts to portray themselves as “populists” will surely fail, and suggests the Republicans will probably "stay" in charge because they are culturally in tune with the majority of voters: "Traditional values of family, neighborhood, church, school, and the workplace are, to millions of voters, 'money in the bank' -- they are what holds people together, providing security against a rainy day."

Here, Edsall is simply channeling Rush Limbaugh & Bill O’Reilly, those folksy multi-millionaires who never tire of denouncing elitists like teachers, firefighters, paramedics, etc. This is a real mother lode of hegemonic discourse, which could warrant an entire post all to itself. For brevity’s sake, simply note the extraordinary expansion of “traditional values” to turn even one of the conservatives’ most hated enemies—the public school teacher—into one of their own!

(5) Mitchell notes that Edsall, “Like so many of his colleagues, past and present, at The Washington Post,” minimizes public disgust with the GOP “for rampant corruption, family values hypocrisy and lying about Iraq (and then handling the postwar war incompetently),” while claiming the problem is Pelosi & Co:

Yet here is Edsall, in today's New York Times, proclaiming that the party’s leadership – slowed only by Rep. Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rahm Emanuel – will drive the party off the cliff if given half a chance. “The Democratic Party can secure its 2006 gains, but to do so will require abandoning a decades-long willingness to indulge pressure groups on the left that no longer command broad popular allegiance,” he writes. He may be right about some of the oldline interests, but the new “pressure groups” – grassroots, Web-driven activists -- now call the tune in many elections, and proved remarkably successful this year.

Actually, Mitchell is too kind to Edsall. Union membership may still be down, but the number of people who want to be in a union, or who support union goals—such as raising the minimum wage—remains a solid majority, including lots of folks in the Republican base. Environmentalists enjoy similar broad support, as do civil rights advocates, feminists, consumer protection advocates, etc., etc., etc. That’s why the Republicans have to lie all the time about what their legislation is doing—because it goes against what the vast majority of Americans want in all these issue areas.

Now, you may wonder what’s gained by talking about “hegemonic discourse,” when I could just say, “it’s the same damn pack of lies we’ve heard a thousand times before.” And you’d have a point—if this was all there was to it. But it’s not. These lies (and half-truths) have long histories—as some of my comments indicated. They did not just pop out of nowhere. Nor are they isolated from other lies and half-truths.

We can play whack-a-mole with them till we have blisters the size of Kansas (that’s what’s the matter with Kansas, btw), or we can get smart, trace them back to their sources, and deal with them there. If we learn to recognize patterns of hegemonic rhetoric, we’re in a much better place to deal with it, than if we get sucked into arguing over ever new twist that’s introduced.

What’s Ahead

In future installments I plan to discuss the following:

(1) Hegemony as Gramsci and other theorists have described it.
(2) Social Dominance Theory, and how it illuminates the inter-relations of the three aspects of hegemony—narratives, institutions and individual attitudes.
(3) The relationship of hegemony to realigning elections, and its implications for electoral and party-building strategy.
(4) Cognitive complexity and hegemony. (See my diary, “Terri Schiavo, We’re Too Smart!”
(5) Demonization and identification in hegemonic narratives. (“Us vs. Them”)
(6) The role of rightwing think-tanks as hegemony machines.
(7) The Overton Window strategy—how it changes hegemonic discourse without changing fundamental attitudes or reality, and how Democrats can do it better.
(8) Examples of hegemonic narratives we need to understand and contest. (Order may vary):

The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State

(9) Strategies and tactics for fighting hegemony.
(10) Principles for organizing in light of hegemony.

More installments are possible. Changes in order are also possible. But this represents the most sensible ordering I can see at present. I’ll try to do these installments about twice a week, on average.

Hegemony Is The Enemy—Prelude—Milton Friedman

2006-11-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

With the election behind us, the task before us is enormous, more enormous than most folks realize. In a pre-election post, I raised the issue of realigning elections, wave elections that fundamentally alter the party system from one era to another. A single wave election will not do it, I argued. Past history shows we need two in a row.

But even a party system realignment will not be enough to save us—not from such looming threats as global warming, for example. In this series, I argue we must grapple with something deeper than even bringing about a party realignment: we must grapple with the power of hegemony—a high-faluttin word that basically boils down to meaning a dominant ideology in drag as common sense. The recent death of economist Milton Friedman provides an opportunity for a glimpse at the workings of hegemony.

I want to begin with an obituary for Milton Friedman, which I wrote for Random Lengths News, the alternative biweekly paper I work for in the Los Angeles Harbor Area. In writing it, I was not consciously thinking of hegemony. I was thinking of pool. I was trying to sink as many balls with one shot as I could. Afterwards, comes some commentary about hegemony. Friedman, of course, is a perfect figure to talk about as a prelude to this series. With the universal heaping of praise upon him, he was a hero of hegemony. And yet...

Milton Friedman, 1912-2006

Economist Milton Friedman, 94, died on Nov. 16. He was born on July 31, 1912 in New York City to Sarah Ethel Landau and Jeno Saul Friedman, working-class Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, then part of Austria-Hungary, and died to almost universal acclaim. Yet, ironically, his signature economic achievement—the modern resurrection of monetarism—has been virtually abandoned, his broader advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism has produced sluggish growth and widening gaps between rich and poor both in America and across the globe, and his political influence has helped bring to power a brand of social conservatism diametrically opposed to his own libertarianism.

Monetarism, for which Friedman is intellectually best known, is a school of economic theory focused on money and central banking, which in its pure form says that government should do little else, economically, aside from controlling the money supply, expanding it continuously in a steady manner. This directly contradicts Keynsian and post-Keynsian theory that says government should actively intervene to increase demand when necessary. Keynsianism fell out of favor in the 1970s, amidst stagflation and two successive oil shocks, and Friedman’s monetarism was cited as the guiding principle for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies.

Yet, Reagan’s enormous deficits seemed to exemplify military Keynsianism, while late 1980s/early 1990s phenomena like the 1987 stock market crash, and Japan’s prolonged stagnation underscored the inadequacy of Friedman’s inflexible money-supply prescription. His Wall Street Journal obituary admitted, “Central bankers don't follow his prescriptions for how to implement monetary policy, considering them impractical.”

Perhaps the most consistent example of Friedman’s influence can be found in the Third World, beginning after the 1973 violent overthrow of Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected socialist government in Chile by US-backed military forces. Pinochet’s military dictatorship then turned to Friedman’s students and colleagues from the University of Chicago “The Chicago Boys” to restructure its economy on radically “free market” lines. Although Friedman’s direct involvement with Chile was slight, he vigorously defended his colleagues, and the course of Chile under their guidance. The irony of “free markets” imposed by a military coup and ongoing terror never seemed to fully dawn on him.

Beyond Chile and several other military dictatorships (the “death squads”), Friedmanesque policies were then forced on a large number of Third World democracies by the World Bank and International Monitary Fund (the “debt squads”), which demanded the dismantling of government programs, even to the point of closing schools and basic health services. The resulting growth slowdown—over a period of more than 20 years—was directly contrary to Friedman’s theories, and has recently lead to a resurgence in elected leftist governments, most notably Venezuela, Brazil and (just this month) Nicaragua.

If Friedman seemed relatively untroubled by the suffering caused by his economic theories in the Third World, he was noticeably upset with the short shrift given to his libertarian views by the conservative movement, including his support for decriminalizing drugs.

“Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages,” he wrote in an open letter to then-drug czar Bill Bennett in 1990. “Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, ‘crack’ would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts.”

More recently, last July, Friedman said, "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression."

Finally, he wasn’t always opposed to government intervention, when markets failed to internalize true costs, for example. He supported London Mayor Ken Livingston’s proposal for a congestion fee for traffic in central London, and might well have supported container fees here in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

In short: His folly was enacted, while his wisdom was ignored.

This obituary points up at least two big-picture things: First, not all his ideas were equally acceptable—only the foolish ones really were. Second, the folly was most intensely embraced when applied to others in the Third World. Closer to home, the folly was more relaxed: “Central bankers don't follow his prescriptions for how to implement monetary policy, considering them impractical,” according to no less than the Wall Street Journal in its obit. These, I would argue, are central facts about how hegemony works.

The wikipedia entry on hegemony—which I’ll quote more fully in my next installment—notes the importance of independent Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci in developing the concept of hegemony. But it then goes on to say:

Recently, critical theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have re-defined the term "hegemony" as a discursive strategy of combining principles from different systems of thought into one coherent ideology.

The combination of diverse elements—such as libertarianism and religious conservatism, for example—into a single hegemonic discourse is absolutely crucial for us. And it’s strikingly visible in Friedman’s career, as recalled in my obituary. When it came to freeing the wealthy and powerful from the restraints of the welfare state, Friedman’s liberatianism was quite welcome into the hegemonic discourse. But when it came to legalizing drug use—drug use most associated with social outcaste groups—it went nowhere, fast. (I didn’t even mention his support for legalized prostitution. Prostitutes, of course, are, by definition, a social outcaste group.)

Similarly, the Third World is, by definition, a social outcaste group. And so there is little, if any, need to modify his most harsh perscriptions. The press release for a report by Center for Economic and Policy Research last year, "The Scorecard on Development: 25 Years of Diminished Progress," said, in part:

"The official data show a very different picture than most policymakers and the public have in mind," said economist Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CEPR and co-author of the report. "The number one question for the IMF and World Bank at their fall meetings this weekend should be: What has gone wrong over the last 25 years in the vast majority of developing countries?"

What’s gone wrong is that the neo-liberal attack on the welfare state has hit full force outside of the industrial core, where some measure of an institutional political resistance still exists. That’s why Friedman’s measures had to be abandoned for “more flexible” approaches here at home.

And so it is, that even a primary hero of hegemony is only listened to when he fits the script. As for the rest, it’s simply ignored, as if it never existed. Friedman himself seemed to be under no illusions about his individual importance—which was often taken as false modesty. A July 22 article in the Opinion Journal has the following passage:

Here, Mr. Friedman explains "the story of the postwar period" in the U.S. "In 1945-46, intellectual opinion was almost entirely collectivist. But practice was free market. Government was spending something like 20%-25% of national income. But the ideas of people were all for more government. And so from 1945 to 1980 you had a period of galloping socialism. Government started expanding and expanding and expanding." Mr. Friedman stopped, as if deciding whether to use the word "expanding" a fourth time, before continuing: "And government spending went from 20% to 40% of national income.

"But what was happening in the economy was producing a reverse movement in opinion. Now people could see, as government started to regulate more, the bad effects of government involvement. And intellectual opinion began to move away from socialism toward capitalism. That, in my view, was why Ronald Reagan was able to get elected in 1980." I noted, here, that Mr. Friedman, too, had some role to play in this shift in opinion. He was, characteristically, reluctant to take any credit. "I think we have a tendency to attribute much too much importance to our own words. People saw what was happening. They wouldn't have read my Newsweek columns and books if the facts on the ground hadn't been the way they were."

Of course, Friedman’s account of what happened in the real world is more than just colored by his ideology. European welfare states were much larger that the US. As this chart from the Citizen’s Guide to the 2000 Budget shows, total US government spending has never come close to 40% of GDP, and hasn’t changed much since 1981, when Reagan came into office. (The composition of spending—and revenue—is another matter.)

But Friedman is right that (1) elites saw the world this way, and weren’t the least bit inclined to share the pain of America’s relative decline in the world, if they could shift the pain entirely onto someone else, and (2) he just happened to be a convenient figure for the hegemonic discourse machine. His “legendary figure” status was a product of social need, on the part of those served by hegemony. The praise showered on him in his obituaries was payment for his services rendered. And all that foolishness about legalizing drugs and prostitution could simply, safely be ignored. It didn’t even need to be explained away.

That’s how hegemony works.

Liberalism is the "True Conservatism"

2006-11-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

(Begun in mid-October. Completed today.)

Ever since the Bush regime began noticeably sputtering near the beginning of its second term, a growing chorus of conservative voices has grown increasingly distressed, and as it has seemed that Bush’s failures would come to tar an entire movement, the cry has increasingly gone forth that Bush is not a “true conservative.” There is a problem in that claim, of course: it was not Bush alone, but his entire Administration, and the Republican majority in Congress, and at times a majority of conservative court appointees as well who were jointly responsible for the increasingly disastrous direction that the country has taken. If Bush was not a “true conservative,” then neither, one would think, were any of the other major players in the conservative movement of the past 30-plus years.

Absurd!

Or is it?

The rhetoric of “personal responsibility” has never applied to movement conservatives themselves. It’s always been for other people. The same is true of “fiscal conservatism”—no one can unbalance a budget like Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes, but let a Democrat, like Bill Clinton, take the helm, and watch out! Fiscal conservatism is back with a vengeance. Judicial restraint is similarly “for liberals only,” as a study of Supreme Court decisions showed the conservatives far more willing to overturn laws than their moderate brethren (rhetoric aside, there are no true liberals left on the court.) Conservatives have not lived up to their rhetoric in a long, long time.

But aside from such signature rallying cries, there is something much deeper going on, something not merely of the moment, or even of a generation, but something fundamental about the very essence of the liberal project and the conservative opposition over the past 500 years. Throughout this period—and one can go back even further, to the Italian Renaissance—conservatives have attacked liberals for undermining the established social order. Liberals, of course, have not seen things that way—with rare, but important exceptions, such as overthrowing the established social order of British colonial rule over the American colonies, or overthrowing the established social order of slavery.

Generally, however, liberals have cared less about the social order, and more about people themselves; and for this reason they have not generally engaged in directly countering the conservative critique. This is quite understandable, really. For conservatives, the social order is much more real than individual people are. For liberals, the reverse is true. And both sides naturally express themselves in terms of what is most real to them.

Yet, in doing so, liberals have made a significant mistake, for the liberal philosophy is actually far superior to conservative alternatives when it comes to a number of key conservative ideals. For example, liberalism is superior in preserving social order and harmony in a dynamically changing, and diverse world—a world in which traditional structures commonly fail, causing widespread chaos and strife. Liberalism is not the cause of such change—as conservatives commonly allege—but rather its facilitator, providing means of managing change so intense that it would otherwise tear societies apart. A prime example is the idea of a modern secular state has proven fundamentally important in putting an end to religious wars, which otherwise threaten perpetual strife.

Of course, liberal ideas do encourage individuals to live their own lives, and claim autonomy, rather then defer blindly to tradition, and to this extent—in a wide array of situations—liberalism certainly does promote change, rather than social stability. But promoting change is not the same as causing it, and a view that is solely based on individuals cannot comprehend the larger forces of history into which individuals are born.

There is nothing new in the human desire for autonomy, nor in rebellion against the dead hand of the past. What is new—as of about 500 years ago—is the pace of historical change, driven by trade, technology and population growth... not political philosophy.

Although liberalism and conservatism have taken various different forms in different lands at different times, there are at least two core constants that seem to endure: (1) Liberals favor broad social equality, while conservatives favor hierarchy. (2) Liberals favor social progress—expanding social equality—while conservatives favor the status quo, in the form of existing hierarchies, or even arguing for a return to earlier times, when they fear existing hierarchies are themselves corrupt.

As wave after wave of liberal reform has established new sorts of rights and/or rights holders, conservative ideology has been reconfigured to normalize what it previously had denounced as socially destructive—religious freedom, competitive markets, free speech, democracy, racial equality, etc. Thus, conservative ideology is riven with deep discontinuities, papered over by apologists and rhetoricians—explaining away past support for slavery and segregation, for example—while liberalism has a fundamental continuity to it, with changes consisting of pragmatic adjustments to new situations and challenges, or to recognizing and redressing previous contradictions.

In the Washington Monthly last summer, Alan Wolfe wrote an article, “Why Conservatives Can't Govern” that summarized the conservative’s historical dilemma in America:

Odd men out in America's liberal political culture, America's conservatives were never very unified. Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall wanted to see a strong national government created to improve America's economic prospects, even if they retained an aristocratic sense that only social superiors should control that government. (John Adams outdid them on behalf of a strong executive; he thought our first president should be addressed as a monarch). But this kind of New England Federalism would go into abeyance once America's democratizing forces were unleashed. Others insisted that this country should embody timeless Christian principles; they, however, soon ran up against the skepticism of the Founding Fathers and conceptions of religious liberty associated with dissenting Protestantism. With the decline of both, the only significant conservatism left would come from defenders of slavery such as John C. Calhoun. Once the advocate of a strong national government, Calhoun, putting the rights of slaveholders first, viewed this country as a compact among states, not as a unified society. His ideas would live on in the voices of those thinkers, primarily Southern, who objected to relying on national power to promote equal rights for all.

As this litany of lost causes suggests, our conservatives, while representing different regions and economic interests, were united by their irrelevance in the face of history. If the term reactionary is too pejorative, let's call them reactive. In this entrepreneurial, mobile, innovative, and individualistic country, conservatism was constantly on the defensive, aiming to preserve things--deference, reverence, and diffidence, to name three--that most Americans were anxious to shed. Deprived of both a church and state to defend, American conservatives became advocates for privileges determined by birth, suffrage restricted to an elite, and rural virtues over urban realities.

And so conservatives faced a dilemma from the moment the first shots were heard around the world. They could be true to their ideals and stand on the sidelines of political power. Or they could adjust their principles in the interests of political realism and thus negate the essential conservative teaching that principles are meant to be timeless. All the conservatives that played any role in America's history since the age of Jackson chose political relevance over ideological purity.

The Whigs abandoned aristocracy to nominate a popular military leader in the 1840s, hoping thereby to out-democratize the Jacksonians. An emerging business elite defended the free market--an 18th-century liberal innovation detested by agrarian-oriented conservatives--to protect the very kind of privileges that Adam Smith hoped the free market would curtail. Isolationists abandoned the cosmopolitanism of Hamilton, perhaps America's greatest conservative, for a populistic nativism suspicious of worldly grandeur. Clergy from evangelical churches played down such depressing doctrines as original sin and predestination in favor of the wonders of salvation for all. European conservatism had defended authority against liberty and social standing against equality. American conservatives used the language of liberty to justify inequality and promoted democracy to stand against change.

A conservative in America, in short, is someone who advocates ends that cannot be realized through means that can never be justified, at least not on the terrain of conservatism itself. In the past, the ends sought were the preservation of hierarchy, even if the means included appeals to democratic sentiment. In more recent times, conservatives promised order and stability through means dependent upon the uncertainties and insecurities of the market.

The great irony here is that America is the most modernist, individualist, change-oriented country over the course of the last 200+ years, but it has produced what is now the most reactionary form of ruling conservatism. The irony is only apparent, however. It is precisely because conservatism cannot practically work in America that it takes on such fantastical, reality-denying forms. And when it fails—as it inevitably must—the self-anointed “true conservatives” will say that it failed because it was not pure enough, by which they mean it was not sufficiently divorced from reality.

About the current incarnation, Wolfe writes:

Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems, such as managing increasing deficits or finding revenue to pay for entitlements built into the structure of federal legislation. It stems, rather, from the libertarian conviction, repeated endlessly by George W. Bush, that the money government collects in order to carry out its business properly belongs to the people themselves. One thought, and one thought only, guided Bush and his Republican allies since they assumed power in the wake of Bush vs. Gore: taxes must be cut, and the more they are cut--especially in ways benefiting the rich--the better.

The problem was, once they got into office, people wanted them to do something with government. Conservative ideology notwithstanding, it’s what government is for:

Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government....

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

What’s more, there is a form of historical inevitability about this:

The conservative vision of the world, because it is so hostile to government when government is so essential to the way we live now, remains unattractive to most Americans, which is why Republicans must rely on money to substitute for the large popular majorities they are unable to build and sustain. The idea that it could have been, or can be, different is a fantasy. A New England-based, patrician-oriented conservatism which insists on the importance of impersonal standards of high public conduct is as irrelevant in today's political economy as a Southern-style, gentlemanly conservatism that emphasizes chivalry and honor. The cavaliers and Mugwumps are long-gone from conservatism, and the Duke Cunninghams have replaced them.

For all this, however, conservatism is not wholly irrelevant. If the conservative answers have repeatedly been wrong for America, the conservative questions have not—at least some of them. The question of how to preserve social order is a valid and important one, even if the question of how you keep blacks, women, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. in their place is not. And it is in this sense—where conservatives have been most correct—that liberalism has shown itself to be far superior in answering the questions:

You preserve social order by including the so-called “undesirables.” You grant them the dignity they deserve, simply by being human, and they proceed to act with dignity. It’s as simple as that. (You think gays are hedonistic narcissists utterly destructive to social order? Then recognize their right to marry. And stop treating them like second-class citizens.)
You preserve religion’s place as a polestar in people’s lives, precisely by keeping it separate from the vagaries of politics, in which change is the only constant, and compromise a guiding principle. You render unto God that which is God, and unto Cesaer that which is Cesaer’s.
You preserve the integrity of local communities and their institutions by engaging the power of state and national government to deal with problems that are too large for them to handle, that would twist and distort—if not utterly break them, if they were left to stand alone.
You maintain historical continuity, and respect for the nation’s traditions by rethinking both in the light of new experience, and the experience of new Americans. Self-reinvention is our most hallowed tradition.
You command respect for authority by exercising authority with respect for the people, who are the only legitimate source of authority.
You preserve the highest levels of personal morality first by granting people the freedom to discover its logic for themselves, and embrace it as their own freely chosen commitment, and second by insisting on the public morality of a just and equitable social order.

In short, you deliver the most legitimate desiderata of conservatism by embracing the practices, policies and ideals of liberalism.

Liberals are the true conservatives. And this fact—fully and consciously assimilated by liberals themselves—is perhaps the surest foundation on which a new and lasting governing liberal majority can be built in America today.

Beyond Red & Blue---The Possible Underpinnings of A November Sweep

2006-11-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

I began writing this in July. I would have looked so much more prescient if I had finished it up and posted it then! But it contains reworkings of material I was already writing about in other posts, so the connections are obvious.

Since the 2000 election, descriptions of American political discourse and behavior is dominated by "blue" and "red", liberal and conservative as the fundamental divide, with the notion of polarization underlying and dominating all discussions. Even those, such as during the immediate post-9/11 period, in which polarization was temporarily set aside, generally called attention to the fact of polarization by noting that it was conspicuously missing.

Looking forward to the 2006 elections, it seems unlikely to most that we could see a major, realigning election, giving Democrats decisive and lasting control over Congress. There are a number of reasons for this, but woven into all them, in one way or another is fundamental notion of a polarized, evenly-divided electorate. But this presumption may prove false, based on two observations--the first general, the second specific. If it does prove false, then there is considerable chance of a realigning election--one that not only shifts power to the Democrats this election, but establishes a majority that will endure for some time into the future, perhaps even growing more substantial in the 2008 election, for example.

The first observation is that realigning elections are typically about redefining political cleavages, as well as electoral majorities. (Indeed these are two different aspects of the same phenomena.) Thus, whatever is true about the electorate prior to a realigning election has little predictive power of what such an election may produce.

The second observation is that liberal-conservative polarization is more mythical--or "narratively constructed"--than real--or grounded in actual policy differences. There is a much more fundamental split between "everyday" conservatives and "movement" conservatives--aka ultra-conservatives or reactionaries. It is the movement conservative narrative that construes politics in terms of liberal/conservative polarization, and obscures the degree of overlap between liberals and conservatives by demonizing liberals. The realigning potential of this election consists in part of the fragmenting grasp of the ultra-conservative narrative.

That potential is significantly reduced by most establishment Democratic Party forces, who fail to challenge it, and have, indeed, largely accepted and adapted to it. But it is exacerbated by a growing number of grassroots candidates and their supporters, including the collective influence of online activists, whose perspective is not shaped primarily by inside-the-Beltway perceptions and narratives. This potential can be further developed if these forces understand it's nature. Explaining the nature of that potential is the purpose of this post.

I will do this in three parts: (1) De-mythologizing liberal/conservative polarization. (2) Highlighting the conservative/ultra-conservative split. (3) Discussing the potential for narrative reconfiguration.

(1) De-mythologizing liberal/conservative polarization.

According to the myth of liberal/conservative polarization, liberals and conservatives have virtually nothing in common. However, the reality is quite the opposite of this. If the myth were true, then on virtually any public policy question one might ask, there would be very little overlap in answers from liberals and conservatives, and a very large difference. Indeed, a post-election analysis by Chris Bowers in November 2004 showed a difference of around 70% between liberals and conservatives in terms of who they voted for.

However, when we look at questions about issues, we see a very different picture. Instead of 70% differences, 70% even 80% agreements are the norm. This is true of questions with two, three or more alternatives.

I took as my data source the General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS is the premier longitudinal survey of American political attitudes, conducted by the non-profit National Opinion Research Center, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago. The 2006 GSS will be the 26th time it has been conducted. In the US, it is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences, aside from the US Census.

Examining some of the major areas covered by GSS, the following results were found, comparing substantive policy attitudes of liberals and conservatives. Agreement consists of the total agreement-the number of liberals and conservatives both agreeing to either the typical liberal or conservative, or to any number of intermediate alternatives that may be presented. Disagreement is the complement of agreement: If agreement is 80%, disagreement is 20%. I chose four issue areas--national spending, the basis of New Deal Liberalism--and three areas of divisive social "wedge issues" that would be expected to produce some of the largest differences between liberals and conservatives. These are the results:

Of 59 items dealing with issues of national spending, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 12.8 percent. Only 7 items-less than one in eight-had a disagreement of over 20%. None had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 18 items dealing with substantive questions about abortion, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 15.9 percent. Although 8 items had a disagreement of over 20%, none had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 13 items dealing with affirmative action, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 14.6 percent. Just 2 items had a disagreement of over 20%, and none had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 9 items dealing with gays and lesbians, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 19.3 percent. While 5 items had a disagreement of over 20%, just one had a disagreement of over 30%.

In total, of 99 questions, only 22 had a disagreement of over 20%, and just one had a disagreement of over 30%. That means that agreement of more than 80% between liberals and conservatives is the norm on most questions. This is not indicative of a deeply polarized society.

Of course, one can construct much higher levels of polarization, by carefully combining and qualifying questions. But this gets us into the beginnings of the realm of narrative construction. The point I am making here is not that there are no differences between liberals and conservatives, but that the differences at the level of basic individual issues are relatively small, compared to the amount of agreement.

(2) Highlighting the conservative/ultra-conservative split.

The conservative/ultra-conservative split is perhaps best conceived in terms of the 1936 election. In that election, the GOP thought it had a helluva great campaign issue: Social Security. They were absolutely convinced that working people would rise up in rage against the government taking a portion of their wages for old age insurance. The GOP was wrong. They lost the 1936 election in a landslide—a landslide that the fledgling public opinion polling industry correctly predicted, while the old-fashioned straw poll used by Literary Digest incorrectly predicted a GOP victory. One of the first issue polls that Gallup subsequently did concerned Social Security. It discovered massive (80%+) support—support so high that it had to include a large number of self-described conservatives. By the time a Republican finally won the White House again, Dwight D. Eisenhower took office dedicated to protecting, defending, and even expanding Social Security, not abolishing it.

In the 1964 election cycle, a survey conducted by Gallup for the researchers Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril (published in their 1967 book, The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion) produced the a more refined analysis. Relying on a multi-issue scale, they determined that roughly half of all self-described conservatives were operational liberals—defined as those who favored increased social spending across a range of different issues. Similar results were found among ideological conservatives—those identified by support for a set of broad statements about philosophy of government and individual responsibility. In each case, because there moderates as well, the number of conservatives who were also operational conservatives fell significantly below 50%. But even these conservatives did not necessarily want to abolish social spending programs. They were only asked about cutting them. The percentage of true-blue pre-New Deal ultra conservatives was not measured by Free and Cantril, but it was certainly much smaller than the number of people who considered themselves conservatives.

The percent who want to cut all 6 programs is 0.6%. Those who want to abolish them all would naturally be significantly less than that—virtually no one at all. And yet, ultra-conservative orthodoxy surely calls for cutting all social spending—a position rejected by over 99.4% of all Americans, and 98.6% of all self-identified conservatives. If we relax our criteria to include anyone who wants to cut 3 or more programs net (cut 3-6 programs or increase one and cut 4-5), that’s still only 10.0% of self-identified conservatives, and 6.5% of all Americans. Relaxing it further to include anyone who wants to cut 1 or more programs net, the loosest possible criteria, we still get only 16.1% of all Americans, and 24.9% of self-identified conservatives—just under one in four. Clearly, even by the loosest of measures, hard core ultra-conservatives are a small fragment of the conservative community.

But that just takes into account one aspect of conservative philosophy. If we examine just one more criteria—positions on abortions—the number plummets dramatically further, right back down into the truly miniscule level.

Most Americans favor abortions in cases where the women has been raped, where her health is threatened, or when the child would be born with a serious birth defect. However, the hard-core anti-abortion position opposes all exceptions. Combining these just these two criteria-the spending criteria and the abortion criteria, we come up with a figure of 3.5%. If we add just one more criteria-opposition to sex education in the schools-that figure drops further to 1.5%, a truly fringe amount. And yet that is only part of “conservative” orthodoxy requires. Yet, this same orthodoxy pretends to represent the “mainstream” of American opinion, while representing liberals as “far outside” that same mainstream.

This is what I mean by the conservative/ultra-conservative gap. Virtually all conservatives outside a tiny handful of activists are at odds with some significant aspect of the conservative agenda. What keeps them in line is conservative narratives—narratives that conservatives generally accept, even if they don’t follow or act in accord with them 100%. A significant part of these narratives involves the demonization of liberals.

(3) The potential for narrative reconfiguration.

To date, the most comprehensive, up-to-date work dealing with conservatives narratives comes from cognitive linguist George Lakoff. Lakoff’s work centers on cognitive metaphors, and the more general phenomena of cognitive and linguistic frames. These are not narratives per se, but they are the underpinnings of narrative. Furthermore, Lakoff’s own work is not primarily directed in a way to help us work on opening up the conservative/ultra-conservative gap. It illuminates the differences between liberal and conservative worldviews—and even, more subtly to the differences between what he calls “ideological conservatives” and “pragmatic conservatives.” But even this last distinction is not the one I’m aiming for. It’s not what isolates a mere 1% or so of the population.

The effective core of conservatism is identity politics. It’s what binds ordinary conservatives with reactionary ultra-conservatives. Mostly, it’s about race, religion and ethnicity, depending on these to over-ride class. But opposition to unions is also part of the mix. Free and Cantril found a striking correlation between operational conservatism and opposition to power-sharing with outgroups:

This opposition to organized political power is easily translated into everyday language: “They’re okay, as long as they know their place.” Although the nature and degree of such exclusionary attitudes has certainly altered over time, the GOP’s reliance on anti-gay initiatives and hysteria about illegal immigration are clear reminders that the basic logic remains firmly in place.

Moreover, the example of illegal immigration shows that there can even be a rational foundation for such fears. Illegal immigration is a problem—it’s just that it’s part of a whole complex of problems tied to neo-liberal “free trade” economics that conservatives have no intention of examining, much less challenging. It’s much easier to blame the victims with the darkest skin color. This is the essence of the liberal/conservative split: liberals engage in systematic analysis, seeking out complex patterns of cause and effect, while conservatives are quick to place blame on entire groups of individuals who in reality have very limited power or choice to do things differently, given the systemic forces they face.

Writ large, the problem that liberalism faces is just this: how to promote policies that change the systemic forces people face, when conservatives keep insisting that the problem is the people themselves. The answer, of course, is that conservative rhetoric only goes so far. Despite the hold it has, only the hardcore ultraconservatives steadfastly refuse to embrace liberal policies that work. Furthermore, new such policies can be introduced, but they need to be framed in the right sort of rhetoric.

Ironically, the best example of this is recent years is probably Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, with its rhetoric of “putting people first,” and standing up for those who “work hard and play by the rules.” Clinton’s campaign rhetoric was pitch perfect—ironically, since his GOP-lite governance did not deliver what it promised. Yet, the answers are there, if we combine that sort of rhetoric with policies that actually deliver what Clinton promised.

One key aspect of Clinton’s rhetoric deserves special note—his talk about people who “work hard and play by the rules.” This is a formulation for a broadly inclusive counter-identity to set against conservative identity politics. It says nothing about who people are, in terms of race, religion, skin-color, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. It defines them by shared values—not values talk, but actual, real-life, day-to-day values. And this, of course, is what the promise of America has always been about. This is what liberals—and Democrats of all stripes—ought to be talking about every day. It’s what underlies everything we want to do, which is why we should bring it up every time we talk about doing anything.

This is hardly a panacea, but it is a starting point, a foundation. Narratives of inclusion, based on shared aspirations are an antidote to narratives of exclusion. And a Democratic House—even if it stands alone—can be a perfect place to start launching such narratives, via legislation such as increasing the minimum wage, empowering bulk purchases of prescription drugs in Medicare Part D, increased spending on veterans’ health care, etc. Above all, the House can become a place for holding hearings and staging debates—both about the widespread and systemic scandals and failures of Republican rule, and about what can be done to repair the damage done. and replace the policies that caused it.

The simple act of reopening honest, open debate in the people’s House will itself send a powerful signal that Democrats have a different philosophy, a democratic (as well as a Democratic) philosophy, not a plutocratic one, not theocratic one. There is much more to be filled in. Much, much more. But we must begin with the fundamentals. We must begin by showing America that democracy can work again, and showing them just what that looks like.

More Republican Incompetence?

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall says:

The naysayers didn't believe me, but I said a while ago that trying to strangle your mistress just doesn't play well politically.

Keystone poll: Carney (D) 50%, Sherwood (R) 38%.

So, would Sherwood still have his lead, if only he'd succeeded in strangling her?

They Can't Handle The Truth! Googlebomb Edition.

2006-10-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

Like Chris Bowers says:

no one called right-wing bloggers "unscrupulous" when they did this to John Kerry in 2004. They opened the pandora's box on this one, and they can ram their criticisms for me taking it up a notch upward and to the left.

But it's more than that. In this GOP-worshiping media environment, this is, quite simply, a rare way for "normal Americans" to have some counter-influence without having to own their own media conglomerate.

So, here are the links to the stories they don't want you reading:

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

What A Dem Landslide Could Mean

2006-10-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

As the once-fringe idea that Democrats could sweep to power in the House becomes the new conventional wisdom, the closing days of the campaign will be partly informed by what people think this could mean. Naturally, those who were the last to see this coming will hog the airwaves and printspace telling us what it all could mean. But online reality-based community is used to that noise. So what should we be thinking instead? My tentative answer involves a brief review of some scholarly theorizing, as well as a good hard look at election numbers since 1892, aided by a nice clean graph.

First off, of course, “don’t take anything for granted” remains as true as ever. But increasingly, people are realizing that the prospect of a massive “wave” victory can be just as motivating as fear of defeat. Perhaps even moreso. But what is this “wave” we speak of? Some tell us it is rare event, that comes only once or twice in a lifetime (“water flowing underground”). This raises three questions: (1) What do they mean by that? (2) Is it true? (3) If so, what does that mean?

The first-take answers are:

(1) They are talking about so-called “critical” or “realigning” elections.
(2) They are relatively rare, but more like once-every-10-to-20 year events, if we count “sub-critical” elections the experts don’t all agree on, but are noticeably not run-of-the-mill.
(3) This is a huge opportunity, and Dems should make the most of it.

Critical “Realigning” Elections

But that’s only the beginning of the discussion. The classic notion of the critical election was one that defined the political landscape for several decades to come.

Wikipedia:

Realigning election or realignment are terms from political history and political science describing a dramatic change in politics. It may center on a "critical election" or be spread out over several elections. More specifically, they refer to any one of several United States presidential elections in which there are sharp changes in the rules of the game (such as campaign finance laws or voter eligibility), new issues, new leaders and new bases of power for each of the two political parties, resulting in a new political power structure and a new status quo that will last for decades. The usual focus is on the transition between party systems, as between the First Party System and the Second Party System, and then to the Third Party System and so on.

The central holding of realignment theory, first developed in the political scientist V.O. Key's 1955 article, "A Theory of Critical Elections", is that American elections, parties, and policymaking routinely shift in swift, dramatic sweeps.

The first examples were precisely spaced—eerily so: Washington’s election (1788) followed 36 years later by Jackson’s in 1824, followed 36 years later by Lincoln, 1860, followed 36 years later by McKinnley 1896, followed 36 years later by Roosevelt, 1932—all presidential elections, you will note. And 36 years after Roosevelt—over a decade after the idea was first floated by V.O. Key—we arguably had another one: Richard Nixon in 1968.

The important point about these elections is that they served as more-or-less sharp breaks with the defining terms of politics in the years before them. This does not mean that the parties who won these elections necessarily dominated politics at all times. Indeed, the opposite party often controlled Congress, or even the White House for a significant portion of time, but they never dominated the terms of debate. The fact that Nixon’s victory was followed by a long period of GOP presidential dominance while Dems retained control of the House—and most often the Senate as well—lead to the refinement of calling 1968 a de-aligning election. This concept came from Walter Dean Burnham.

More recently, a number of other candidate elections have been proposed—such as the Congressional elections of 1974 and 1994. But 1974 didn’t change control of Congress, it merely increased an existing Democratic majority. In contrast, 1994 shifted control of the House from Democrat to Republican. This seems to be a true realigning election—a rare Congressional one.

But is this really true? My suggestion is that it’s not—and the reason is very important for what this election means.

My objection to classic realignment theory comes from two directions—the micro-level of examining specific Congressional elections, and the macro-level of looking at historical forces on scales larger than 36-year cycles. Let me be clear—I have great respect for realignment theory. I think it makes good sense of a fairly long stretch of American political history. But it is far stronger as a descriptive theory than a predictive one, because of the larger forces that it cannot possibly account for.

Micro-Level Critique of Realignment Theory: It’s The House, Stupid!

Before considering the macro-level objections, however, we need to start with the more easily-grasped micro-level ones. And these come directly from examining House races over time. I could have gone back to the 1850s, but the 1890s are early enough for the points I want to establish. As the chart below shows, the two most definite realigning presidential elections—1896 and 1932—were preceded by sharp shifts in House elections. (I use percentages to standardize across changes in House size.)

The chart below shows the House share controlled by Democrats (top, blue line) and the percent change in share (bottom, red line), regardless of whether its a gain or loss. The yellow lines mark the three realigning elections—two definite (1896 and 1932), one questionable, at best (1968). The dotted purple lines mark the congressional elections of 1974 and 1994:

[See appendix at the end for a table with the underlying figures.]

In 1896, the Democrats had lost roughly 10% and 35% of the total House share in the two preceding elections. They lost so much that they actually gained back some marginal seats, even as they lost the presidential election of 1896. In 1932, the Democrats won more than 20% of the House share, on top of more then 10% in the 1930 election. Despite the slight difference in timing, these two elections shared three things: (1) a congressional shift preceded the presidential shift, (2) the congressional shift was substantial for two elections in a row, (3) the largest congressional shift in these two cases were the largest seen in the period covered. They are the only two shifts larger than 20%. (This is not an artifact of ignoring earlier data. A similar pattern occurred in 1858 and 1860, when Democrats lost 34.9% and 24% respectively. Party alignment broke down completely from 1820 to 1824).

It’s worth noting that the next three largest shifts—in the 16-17% range—were compensatory, corrective elections: (1) The Democrats retaking power in 1948, following the first GOP House since before FDR took office in 1932. (2) The Democrats dropping from almost 80% down to 60% in 1938, losing about half their 1932 gains, plus all their 1934 and 1936 gains—but only after three straight elections winning over 70%. (3) The Democrats 1922 rebound of 17.4% following an almost-equal loss of 14.1% in 1920. Indeed, the period from 1910 to 1922 also saw the Democrats gain 14.4% in 1910 and lose 14% in 1914, rounding out the rest of the top eight, all of the elections in which more than one seat in eight changed hands. This period of time saw the Republicans split into progressive and conservative wings, giving the Democrats an opening to break the era of Republican dominance—which they ultimately failed to do. This is what this series of corrective and counter-corrective elections is all about.

Immediately below these in size of shift is the 1994 election, when the GOP gained 54 seats—just shy of one in eight (12.5%). It is followed by the Democrats 1946 loss (12.4%)—producing a GOP majority that lasted just two years—the Democrats 1930 gain of 11.9%, and the Democrats 1974, post-Watergate gain of 11.9%. The Democrats 1958 gain of 11% comes next—the last remaining shift of 11% or more.

A Pattern Emerges—Successful vs. Failed Realignment

If we put these all together, a pattern emerges: unambiguous realignment comes from two consecutive elections totaling at least a 30% shift, and they produce a two-term president who wins re-election easily. It is followed by a major corrective election coming within two to three cycles, which reduces the majority, but does not change control of the House. Failed realignments do not achieve that level of shift in such a short period. The Democrats failed realignment of the 1910s came close—with a combined 22.9% shift from 1910 and 1912, and a combined 31.9% shift from 1906 to 1912. The problem with taking so long to accumulate such a gain is that a turnaround is inevitable. Indeed, this series of five consecutive gains is the longest streak since 1890. The Republicans followed up by gaining share in the next four elections—taking back 36.7%. The Democrat’s majority was gone in just two elections (1916). They would not have a majority again until 1932—eight elections later. Furthermore, this failed realignment produced a two-term president—Woodrow Wilson—but he won election only because the Republican Party was split with the Bull Moose defection, and he was re-elected only by a hair.

The Republican’s failed realignment of the 1940s and 1950s was even weaker. They gained a House majority in 1946 on the strength of three staggered election gains topping 10%: 16.5% in 1938, 10.3% in 1942, and 12.4% in 1946, for a total of 39.8%. In between, however, the Democrats won 5.7% back (1940 and 1944 combined), and immediately after (1948) they won 17.2%. The GOP nibbled back, gaining 11.5% in the next two elections combined, to eke out a bare majority in 1952, when they finally elected a president—Eisenhower, a war hero who ran a decidedly non-ideological and largely non-partisan campaign. But they lost that majority the next election, and did not regain it again for 40 years—even though Eisenhower was easily re-elected.

Using these guidelines, it’s obvious that Nixon’s election in 1968 cannot be considered part of a realignment. The GOP did pick up 10.9% share in the 1966 election—but this was a correction to Democrats 8.3% share pickup in 1964, and was followed by only an anemic 1.1% pickup in 1968, and a 2.8% loss in 1970. Even without Watergate, there was nothing close to the makings of a realignment in these numbers, even (or perhaps especially) considering the deep split in the Democratic Party over race and civil rights.

De-Aligning Elections/Politics

However, this perspective on the failure of 1968 to measure up as a realigning presidential election reinforces the case—promoted by William Dean Burnham—for seeing it as a de-aligning election—one that breaks the connection between presidential and congressional voting, making divided government the norm. This same perspective also undermines the case for seeing 1980 or 1994 as realigning elections, since both simply undid temporary alignments of 1992, which produced a President and Congress of the same party. The actual realignment following 1994 did not take place until 2000—an election in which the “winner” lost by half a million votes, and won by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Although it produced a return to presidential/congressional alignment, the popular vote support was not there for it, and Jefford’s defection reflected the mismatch of this reality with the ideological over-reach of the Bush administration. Without the accidental gift of 9/11, the 2002 election looked to repeat the pattern of 1994, returning to a solidly de-aligned configuration.

In short, this perspective on what makes for realigning elections reinforces the sense from other sources that where we find ourselves today is historically anomalous and unlikely to be stable. However, there’s one more perspective to take on the micro-level before turning to macro-level considerations. This concerns the volatility of elections.

Decreased Volatility—A Longterm Process

If we look at the 26 elections from 1910 to 1960 (inclusive), we find that 11 of them had a shift in share of 10% or more, compared to 15 with a share shift of less than 10%. In comparison, the next 22 elections—from 1962 to 2004—look strikingly different: only three had share shifts of more than 10%, while 19 had share shifts of less than 10%. Examining the other extreme, just one election from 1910 to 1960 had a share shift of less than 1% and one more had a share shift less than 2%. In contrast, from the 1962 to 2004, six had share shifts under 1%, and another six had share shifts of 2% or less—combined, that’s more than half the elections since 1960.

Clearly political volatility has dropped dramatically—as is perfectly obvious if one looks back at the chart above. The two most prominent peaks—1974 and 1994—would be quite unremarkable in the pre-1960 era. They are only regarded as exceptional, defining events because such volatility has become remarkably rare, not because they are historically significant. What’s historically significant is the lack of half a dozen or so other elections like them since 1960.

Of course we’re all familiar with explanations for why there’s been so little change in Congress since the GOP took power in 1994. But this longer-term perspective tells us that this is just an accentuation of a much longer trend. Up until recently, when the conventional wisdom was that the Democrats could not retake the house, this equated to saying that the share shift would not be more than 3.5%—what it was in 1978. From 1910 to 1960, only 5 out of 26 elections were that placid. It is unthinkable that such a disastrous term as the past two years would result in such a placid election. But since 1962, 14 of 22 elections had shifts of less than 15 seats, 7 were more volatile, and one (1978, as noted) saw a shift of exactly 15 seats. Aside from 1994, the last time an election saw more than 15 seats shift was 1984, when 16 shifted.

Decreased Volatility and The Macro-Environment

This recent history is indicative of a changed macro-historical environment. Whatever commonplace explanations we may have—increased advantages of incumbency, the perfection of bipartisan gerrymandering, etc—these need to be seen as historical manifestations, along with the set of assumptions that encourages us to accept it as “just the way things are” and discourages us from seeking deeper historical perspectives.

If volatility had not changed dramatically, there would be some fairly straightforward conclusions to draw about this election and its significance—that one election is not enough to change things, and that we should be thinking in terms of how to make major gains in at least two consecutive elections. Seeing lack of volatility as part of the problem of a moribund political system, our goal should still be the same—but with the added caveat that we have to think very seriously about what to do to enhance volatility (aka the power of the people to choose their representatives, rather than the other way around). Serious campaign finance reform, such as the clean money model from Maine and Arizona, currently on California’s ballot, would certainly be part of the solution. So would serious media reform, with reinstatement of the fairness doctrine as a no-brainer first step.

This is, in short, another supporting argument in favor of Chris Bower’s post-2004 election analysis conclusion that the way to grow the Democratic coalition is by aggressively embracing governmental reform. But it’s also an invitation to think more deeply about what’s behind decreased volativility, about what it means for our democracy, and the general welfare.

Just as the Beltway Dem establishment opposed—even ridiculed—the idea of running hard in a wide field in this election, in favor of narrow targeting, we should expect them to want to be satisfied with whatever majority we win in this election, trying to do what the GOP did after 1994—limit volatility to maintain whatever margin they have, rather than use power robustly to strive for more gains in a second election—which is the key to a true realignment. This may not always be so blatantly stated, but it will be the underlying operating assumption. It is already the operating assumption behind those who see no problem with taking as much K-Street money as we can.

The key to understanding our macro-environment comes from two books by Kevin Phillips—not from their main theses, but from important background themes. In Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Phillips draws parallels to the three most recent world powers that preceded us: Spain, Holland and Britain. All three started off as industrious, productive domestic economies, with a healthy overseas trade. As their overseas trade came to dominate the world, more money, talent and resources went into trade itself, but even more into finance. At the peak of their power, each experienced a stunning, unexpected reversal—much as we did in Vietnam. After that, the finance sector really took off, to the benefit of the upper quarter or so of society, while the rest of society stagnated, producing a highly polarized society, legitimized by more than a generation of reactionary politics, until a breaking point is reached. This results in a broadly egalitarian, populist reformation, reigning in the power of wealth and taking steps to rebuild the domestic economy.

The growth of international power, to point of empire, and the concentration of economic power that goes with it seem like prime candidates for macro-level forces disrupting the earlier regularity of realigning elections. For a more fine-grain look at how this manifests, we need to turn to a second book.

In American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Phillips discusses the cultural fascination with wealth and aristocratic lineage that began in the Reagan Era, then moves on to the specific politics of restoration—drawing parallels between the restoration of the GOP and the Bush dynasty after the Clinton presidency, and Stuart Restoration in Britain and the Bourbon Restoration in France. These parallels highlight a court-centered politics of nepotism, favoritism and incompetence, deeply estranged from concern for the common good. It’s hard to imagine a more apt description of the Bush Regime and its constellation of enablers in Congress, the media, on K-street, and throughout the land.

Decreased volatility is but a natural symptom of the forces Phillips describes as part of the background of these two books. The good news is that these forces inevitably wane—as they seem poised to do in America today. How soon the tide is turned, how well and wisely a new order is constructed—these cannot be guaranteed by history. But the downfall of the current system is virtually inevitable. It is simply unsustainable, despite its own narcissistic fantasy of triumphant and eternal rule.

Hints For Constructing A New Majority

Phillips is a self-identified populist, by which he means he is economically liberal and socially conservative. This is how he characterizes the natural inclinations of the middle class, and of the reformation movements that follow the reactionary phase of politics. But the evidence related to social conservatism—and even its meaning—is a good deal fuzzier than that related to economic liberalism. Furthermore, the three previous examples Phillips cites were all much more culturally unified than multi-racial, multi-cultural America is.

It is natural to assume that economic liberalism will bind together a new majority more certainly than any social policy, for the simple reason that even a majority of conservative voters favor the welfare state. Views on a wide range of social issues are more fragmented and diffuse. Economic liberalism has been opposed by elites of both parties over the past thirty-odd years—but not by all of them, as seen, for example, in the mobilization of wealthy opponents of abolishing the estate tax.

The driving, defining force in the historical processes that Phillips describes is fundamentally economic—a restoration of broad equality in sharing the rewards of work. The notion that this is somehow culturally conservative derives from conservative caricatures of the welfare state, defining it in terms of its help for the most downtrodden and dysfunctional. But the vast majority of welfare state spending and benefit (including tax policies, investments in education, health, technology and infrastructure, etc.) has gone to the middle class to make them middle class. This should be our model in shaping new policies for the century ahead. Policies that broadly benefit everyone create conditions in which social and cultural tolerance flourishes.

The realignments of 1896 and 1932 hold important lessons for us. In the 1880s and 90s, the power of plutocracy was consolidated because the broad mass of people were divided. The rural populists, Jewish and Catholic immigrants and native Protestant working class were all structurally exploited by the Guilded Age plutocracy, but were deeply divided culturally—which is what allowed the realignment of the congressional elections of 1892 and 1894, leading up to the presidential election of 1896. This was not a stable arrangement, however, as seen in the progressive revolt, and the relative strength of the failed Democratic realignment, which nonetheless had a strong ideological component. In contrast, the realignment of 1930-1932 bought together the Catholic and Protestant working class, united the Northern urban working class with the South, and produced a much stronger coalition of forces, as seen in the much weaker failed Republican realignment.

Thus, what’s needed for a new realignment is the bringing together of previously splintered groups with common economic interests (the lesson of 1932), but it’s also helpful to splinter the other side (the lesson of 1896). It’s safe to say that 2006 is primarily a referendum on the Republicans, and is playing out as a substantial splintering of their side. This is the prime significance of the Foley scandal. While it is relatively minor in real-world significance, it is a major disruption of the GOPs conservative discourse, threatening to utterly undo the alliance of convenience between social conservatives and economic conservatives. A successful realignment—not just for the next election cycle or two, but for generations—requires that the 2008 election is about bringing together previously splintered groups. This is what the GOP failed to do following its 1994 success. The failure was hardly surprising, given the nutcase leadership of Newt Gingrich, But we need to work hard not to repeat his mistake.

There will be at least three different versions of how to bring groups together that we are likely to see. One from the Beltway and two from the netroots.

The Beltway’s favored solution is—as always—to “move to the center,” which means that Democrats again must move right. This will be supported by narratives about non-partisanship, blaming “extremism on both sides,” etc. It means further abandoning economic populism, which enjoys the overwhelming support of the American people. It’s the DLC all over again. The most plausible salesman of this approach is Barack Obama, who far too many people still mistake for a progressive. Well, some of his rhetoric surely is progressive. But that’s rhetoric, not reality.

The netroots have two counter-visions. Markos—a former Republican—is the most visible supporter of a libertarian realignment. This is especially meant to appeal to people like him—people who resonate to traditional pre-religious right GOP narratives. Paul Hackett was a classic articulator of this view. Chris Bowers—a pragmatic lefty—supports a government reform agenda. It’s not the New Deal, but it is New Deal 2.0. Government is and should be a much bigger player in this view, compared to the others, but transparency, responsiveness, and participatory democracy are central to this vision. It is very much about growing a deeply democratic culture, much as the union movement was in its pre-bureaucratic heyday.

The two netroots visions can either conflict with each other, or find common ground by concentrating on specific examples. The spirit that Markos is after—of autonomy and enterprise—has historically always required much more government support than people realize, from the building of canals and the Louisiana Purchase to the massive, prolonged government spending on science and technology that gave birth to Silicon Valley and the personal computing revolution. If we look toward specific challenges and how to meet them, we are far more likely to find ways that the two netroot visions can integrate into a coherent, but multifaceted whole.

An important aspect of doing this is looking for specific policy packages that address regional and sub-regional needs. Policies for the West, for example, will involve ways of bringing together environmentalists, ranchers, hunters and others to develop ways of preserving what’s best and most distinctive about the land and its people, while developing new industries, technologies and cultural practices that give people a future as well as a past.

The New Deal had important regional aspects to it that are undeservedly forgotten. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), for example, brought electrical power and economic development to a previous backwater. Regionally-specific policies, generated primarily by the people of those regions, should have an even bigger role to play this time around, both for pragmatic and for political reasons. They are the key to turning different regions blue, and the key to integrating the two netroots visions to provide a unified alternative to the Beltway/DLC vision.

It’s also a hint at where to concentrate our efforts in the waning days of the election: on those races where we see and feel a particular opportunity and capacity for articulating a regional vision that serves to bring a national vision down to human scale.

Appendix: Dem House Share Table: 1890-2004*

% Gain/ Year % Share Loss 1892 61.2 -10.4 1894 26.0 -35.2 1896 34.7 8.7 1898 45.0 10.3 1900 42.2 -2.8 1902 45.6 3.4 1904 34.9 -10.7 1906 42.7 7.8 1908 43.9 1.2 1910 58.3 14.4 1912 66.8 8.5 1914 52.8 -14.0 1916 49.1 -3.7 1918 44.2 -4.9 1920 30.1 -14.1 1922 47.5 17.4 1924 42.0 -5.5 1926 44.5 2.5 1928 37.7 -6.8 1930 49.6 11.9 1932 71.9 22.3 1934 74.0 2.1 1936 76.7 2.7 1938 60.2 -16.5 1940 61.3 1.1 1942 51.0 -10.3 1944 55.6 4.6 1946 43.2 -12.4 1948 60.4 17.2 1950 54.0 -6.4 1952 48.9 -5.1 1954 53.3 4.4 1956 53.7 0.4 1958 64.7 11.0 1960 60.1 -4.6 1962 59.5 -0.6 1964 67.8 8.3 1966 56.9 -10.9 1968 55.8 -1.1 1970 58.6 2.8 1972 55.6 -3.0 1974 66.8 11.2 1976 67.1 0.3 1978 63.6 -3.5 1980 55.6 -8.0 1982 61.8 6.2 1984 58.1 -3.7 1986 59.3 1.2 1988 59.7 0.4 1990 61.3 1.6 1992 59.3 -2.0 1994 46.8 -12.5 1996 47.3 0.5 1998 48.5 1.2 2000 48.7 0.2 2002 46.9 -1.8 2004 46.4 -0.5

* Note: Unlike the chart, this table gives the change in shares as gain (positive) or loss (negative). The absolute value of this column was used in the table, in order to focus attention on the magnitude of change.

Over-Determined Conservative 'Hypocrisy'

2006-10-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald has posted yet another of his typically thorough critiques of current conservative nonsense, "Peggy Noonan's poetic love of dissent, civility and grace", in which he gives Noonan's claim that left is more intolerant of free speech than the right the old reality-based treatment, citing academic examples (targetting Juan Cole and Ward Churchill), media exmples (Donald Wildmon & the American Family Association, Noonan herself) and--in the update section, the Bush Administration itself (here and here).

But for all his sharp-eyed criticism of the woeful imbalance between censorious inclinations on the right and the left, Greenwald says nothing about the why of it--or the why of Noonan's pot/kettle/black accusations. By now, it's high time that we started focusing attention on the deeper cogntive/motivational level, as well as the calling-them-on-their-BS level.

One source of insight comes from Robert Altemeyer's decades of research into Rightwing Authoritarianism (RWA). It bears repeating that RWA =/= "conservative." There is a definite correlation between conservatism and RWA in the US and other Western democracies, but RWA is a social psychological measure--in the former Soviet Union, it is hardline Communists who were high-RWAs. Furthermore, the correlation is relatively weak among ordinary citizens. However, it grows increasingly stronger as the level of political involvement increases, and since political rhetoric is usually crafted, or at least vetted and propagated by those working at the highest levels, we should not be surprised to find that descriptions of RWA are strongly correlated with how conservative elites and hard-core activists comport themselves.

Among his findings, Altemeyer discovered a constellation of different specifics that can readily be grouped under "Hostility Toward Outgroups." RWAs are more likely to:

It is, of course, perfectly consistent to suppress the speech of such outgoups. Indeed, one of Altemeyer's research projects specifically examined campus-based "politically correctness," and found that it was the more conservative RWAs who were the most likely to advocate suppressing free speech.

Other findings by Altemeyer can be categorized under "Faulty reasoning" — RWAs are more likely to:

This readily explains how the few feeble examples that Noonan provides can convince many conservatives that it is liberals who do all the things that conservatives actually do far more often, and far more systematically.

Furthermore, there's a more general finding that RWAs are more fearful in general--which is part of why they are so inclined to scapegoat outgroups, as well as why they are more likely to "Uncritically accept that many problems are ‘our most serious problem.’" This is consistent with their feeling that they are being persecuted by attempts to censor them that are far in excess of the actual incidents.

RWA is just one source of insight into the conservative mindset, but it is a powerful one that helps illuminate a good deal of what's behind the sorts of claims that Noonan's latest hissy fit exemplifies.

An entirely distinct attitudinal influence is Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), which revolves specifically around the promotion of group dominance of one group over all others. SDO is particularly noteworthy, because it is associated with the propagation of what are called "hierarchy enhancing legitimating myths"--which function in part to justify the use of double standards, which is why it's not really "hypocrisy" when conservatives employ double standards. They really do believe that different standards should apply to them than apply to everyone else.

There are other influences that are not attitudinal in nature, but that have to do with levels of cognitive awareness and complexity. Much of this is covered and analyzed in the 2003 paper, "Conservatism As Motivated Social Cognition" (PDF). While there is significantly less information from some of these other areas--including some not covered in the paper--tying them back to political orientations, the data we do have is all consistent with the broad thesis that conservatives are less self-conscious, less aware of their own failings, and less capable of making impartial judgements about the world.

These are statistical findings, meaning that there are abundant individual exceptions on both sides. But given the documented example of RWA, it seems highly plausible that in other cases as well, the realm of political elites, operatives and activists is disproportionately affected by these factors--particularly since widely-circulated narratives have the effect of reinforcing all the of attitudinal biases and cognitive deficits associated with conservatism in a broad statistical manner.

In conclusion, there is ample evidence out there that the sort of behavior evidenced by Noonan is over-determined (the result of multiple, reinforcing causes) in at least five different ways:

(1) As seen in the listing of factors associated with RWA, there are mutliple factors both tending toward outgroup demonization--a natural concomitant of suppression free speech--and those tending toward faulty reasoning. Thus, both tendencies are likely to be over-determined by RWA and its consequences. (To be absolutely sure, one would have to design tests to remove the influence of RWA, and study those of its associated factors by themselves.)

(2) The interaction of faulting reasoning and outgroup stigmatization represents a higher level of over-determination. Faulty reasoning facilitates and justifies outgroup stigmatization, while outgroup stigmatization often drives faulty reasoning.

(3) RWA and SDO have been shown to be co-determinants of group prejudice as well as other social attitudes. Thus, they work together to over-determine the well-springs of Noonan's acting out.

(4) Non-attitudinal factors, such as levels of cognitive complexity, reinforce the codetermined effects of RWA and SDO. In general, conservatives are less introspective, less likely to ponder their own inclinations toward projection and other ego defense mechanisms. Indeed, introspection is a decided liberal value, which is often mocked in culture wars discourse.

(5) The propagation of conservative narratives, combined with repetetive demonizaiton of "liberals" enhances the statistical differences underlying all of the above.

This is actually just a brief of sketch of what we're up against. It should help to explain why the sort of analysis that Glenn presents is not likely to have much of an impact on the behavior of conservate activists. The value of what he is doing--as well as countless others who are doing similar work--is that it is creating a record, documenting patterns of behavior that can become grist for the mill of critical re-examination, and the reformation of our political, and broader intellectual cultural.

Foley's Follies, Public Coverups And Moral Panics

2006-10-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

For almost a year—no, make that five years, maybe more, the GOP's top leadership hid a sex-scandal from the American people, involving Congressman Mark Foley cyberstalking House pages. Now, over the past three days, the GOP's top leadership has been involved in a public coverup of that longterm private coverup. It's not the first example we've seen of a public coverup by the GOP. Indeed, the seemingly paradoxical notion--a public act of concealment--dates back, in it's current incarnation, to Gerald Ford's Watergate pardon of Richard Nixon, the man who made him President. But unlike most GOP coverups, this one is about SEX, and for that reason, if no other, it has to be handled extremely delicately. Like a finicky explosive, it could easily blow up without warning.

Woops! It already has. But the GOP is still hoping against hope that they can control this thing, somehow, someway. Which means it’s a good time for some historical and cultural perspective.

As noted over at Talking Points Memo, Hastert’s sudden call for an investigation of anyone who may have been aware of the Foley matter—including "anyone outside the Congress"—could well be intended to “investigate ABC’s sources and see if they can find any Democratic Party and/or liberal interest group involvement in the IM leaks.”

As Republicans and the media who love them scramble to assemble narratives favorable to the GOP, it helps us keep our bearings if we realize that we’re in the middle of what’s become an increasingly common phenomena in recent years: the public coverup. Gaining some perspective on the generic phenomena can help us navigate the twists and turns of the specific one we find ourselves in today.

Public Coverups—Prelude

Once upon a time you just didn't do public coverups. It was considered an oxymoron. If something's public, it's not covered up. So the very existence of the form merits special attention.

What it indicates, simply, is that those who got caught are immune to punishment--at least the sort of punishment that the rest of us would get in similar circumstances. It is, in short, a declaration of fundamental inequality, of the reign of double-standards, privilege, power and hierarchy, rather than single-standards, rights, justice and equality. The former are conservative principles, the later, liberal ones. And thus it is that the dawn of the modern conservative age should rightly be placed with Gerald Ford's Watergate pardon of Richard Nixon. Public coverups require widespread collusion among elite groups (not just a single party), supported by shared norms—even if they are not the same norms shared by society at large. This includes significant elements of the “opposite party” as well as the punditocracy and political news press.

Public Coverups--A Brief Review

Ford paid a price for pardoning Nixon. Many believe it cost him the 1976 presidential election. Fast forward 4 years to the 1980 election, and we have Debategate, in which Jimmy Carter's debate prep book was stolen and turned up in the hands of Ronald Reagan's team. Had it been the other way around, all bloody hell would have broken loose, you can be sure. But that's the way conservative double standards work. Adding injury to insult, there was the GOP's "October Surprise" operation--a secret deal with the Iranian government to prevent release of the hostages until after the elections, thereby ensuring Carter's defeat. This qualifies as a public coverup because the hostages were released the day of Reagan's inauguration--a veritable red flag waving across the continents, saying "Lookie here! Lookie here!"

Of course, the American political class looked the other way. Yet, the October Surprise story never really went away, despite repeated attempts to stomp it out. There were a number of public coverups during the Reagan Administration, but none of them bigger than the Iran/Contra Scandal. This featured at least four separate stages of public coverup. First, the story was originally broken by Robert Parry of the Associated Press, but the DC press corps buried the story by taking Oliver North’s denials as definitive proof that Parry was wrong. They took North’s word because he was a major source of leaks for all of them. Second, after CIA operatives had been shot down in Nicaragua and the story broke overseas, the Reagan Administration investigated itself, with it's handpicked "Tower Commission" report. Third was the Congressional investigation, in which the Democrats--the majority party in both houses--promised in advance that impeaching Reagan was off the table, regardless of what was found. Although the Democrats carried it out, they clearly did so as a consequence of Republican threats--"No More Watergates" or else it meant war. The Democrat’s investigation also rushed forward recklessly without regard to undermining criminal prosecutions—such as that of Oliver North, whose conviction was later obtained, but then thrown out on appeals. Fourth was GHW Bush's pardoning of Iran/Contra criminals who could enabled prosecutors to convict him of perjury, at the very least--for his false claim that he had been "out of the loop."

Every step of the way, official actors in plain view—Republicans in the lead, but media members and Democrats playing crucial roles as well—undermined the process of bringing the facts to light, and holding those responsible accountable for their actions.

Moral Panics—A Brief Digression

The Clinton years saw a reverse variant, the inverse of a public coverup, in which there is a prolonged investigation of non-existent wrongdoing. The non-existence of an underlying Whitewater crime was certified first by Kenn Starr's predecessor Robert Fiske, second by the Pillsbury Report (a thorough investigation of the Whitewater affair by the lawfirm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, which was virtually ignored in the media because it systematically destroyed the facade of a genuine scandal), and finally by Starr himself, when he attempted to resign his position, before a storm of protest from rightwing activists forced him to stay on. (At the same time, Newt Gingrich flagrantly violated House ethics rules, escaping punishment on most counts despite being found guilty. Eventually, the GOP decided to essentially disable ethics oversight. A number of Clinton’s pursuers in the House turned out to be adulterers in their own right.)

This reverse variant—in which the total lack of wrongdoing is publicly exposed, and baselessly, but hysterically denied, over and over again—qualifies as a special case of another phenomena studied by sociologists: moral panics. Wikipedia describes them thus:

A moral panic is a reaction by a group of people based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. It has also been more broadly defined as an "episode, condition, person or group of persons" that has in recent times been "defined as a threat to societal values and interests." [1]

These panics are generally fueled by media coverage of social issues, although semi-spontaneous moral panics do occur. Mass hysteria can be an element in these movements, but moral panic is different from mass hysteria in that a moral panic is specifically framed in terms of morality and is usually expressed as outrage rather than unadulterated fear. Moral panics (as defined by Stanley Cohen) revolve around a perceived threat to a value or norm held by a society normally stimulated by glorification within the mass media or 'folk legend' within societies....

The term was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 to describe media coverage of Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

Examples cited by Wikipedia range from public hysteria over comic books in the 1950s, and backmasking (supposed backwards demonic messages in songs) in the 1970s and 1980s to McCarthyism in the 1950s and the day care sex abuse panic of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The idea of including Red Scares in this broader category is intriguing, and serves to underscore the political dimension in other not-so-overtly-political cases.

Typically, moral panics frequently (but not always) involve actual wrongdoing, but the scope, intensity and significance are often vastly exaggerated. They also usually involve subjects with far less power and prominence than President Clinton. Still, he was the son of a welfare mother, who still retained a considerable connection with his roots—and this definitely offended the sensibilities of the Washington elite. So it’s really not surprising that Clinton received the moral panic treatment.

Public Coverups—The Review Continued

Then came the 2000 election, and public theft of the presidency. It was done right out in the open, for all the world to see. There were so many actors, and so many interlocking acts it would be impossible to fairly summarize. But in the end, US Supreme Court intervened, with every single conservative/Republican justice basing their decision on positions they had previously disavowed, if not virulently attacked.

Then came 9/11. First, Bush ran away and hid, but then was presented as an heroic figure. Then came the very public shift of focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, a shift in focus that (notwithstanding later revisionism) involved very public lying, arm-twisting, and acts of bad faith. After that, the outing of Valerie Plame, and the Whitehouse coverup baldly presented to the American people as Bush pledging to get to the bottom of it (even while doubting that anyone ever would.) There were other investigations as well--such as the 9/11 Commission, and the investigation into the Iraq War intelligence--which left gaping holes that remained unmentioned in polite company. And, of course, the Downing Street Memoes--also unmentioned in polite company.

The Form, Summarized

In the classic, full expression of these cases, there are three elements: (1) Prima facie evidence of criminal behavior--either of statuatory or political crimes (the "high crimes" of "high crimes and misdemeanors" fame.) (2) A pretence of investigation. (3) An obvious failure to fully investigate. Sometimes, the pretense of an investigation was simply dispensed with, while those who called for one were treated like psychotic leepers. But in any event the investigation was clearly understood to be primarily, if not entirely a matter of show, which is where we stand today.

The contrast with its opposite number—the moral panic—is clear. The subjects are pinnacles of social hierarchies, as opposed to despised outsiders. This drastically alters the nature of the pretended investigation, as well as the actual failure to investigate. In the Clinton impeachment, for example, the extensive rightwing efforts to bring Clinton down were laughed off by the official media. When First Lady Hillary Clinton brought up the existence of a “vast rightwing conspiracy,” she was dismissed with laughter—despite the fact that millions upon millions of dollars had been spent by rightwing ideologues, such as Richard Mellon Scaife, precisely for the purpose of bringing down a duly elected President.

The Unfolding Foley Coverup

Now let us summarize where we stand today, and the various elements requiring full investigation.

(A) Former Rep. Foley has at least engaged in predatory online stalking of several pages. His swift resignation strongly suggests there is something significantly more to be found. Multiple criminal violations are a distinct possibility, as is the possible criminal involvement of others in covering for him.

(B) By his own admission that Rep. Alexander, sponsor of one of the pages involved, upon being notified, did not go immediately to law enforcement, or those with oversight authority, but instead notified Tom Reynolds, chair of NRCC, a political organization. This strongly indicates the predominance of a political, damage-control response—not a responsible, law-enforcement or victim-protecting response.

(C) Reynolds helped keep the information hidden.

(D) Reynolds’ chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, had previously been Foley’s chief of staff, and that his change of positions roughly coincided with the time-frame in which Foley’s misconduct came to Alexander’s attention. We do not know if this was mere coincidence, or if Reynold’s change of employment was linked to the private coverup. Reynolds had recently been advising Foley as the scandal broke, before Foley resigned.

(E) Majority Leader Boehner was notified, but helped keep the information hidden.

(F) Rep John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who overseas the page program was notified, but helped keep the information hidden.

(G) Shimkus informed the page clerk, Jeff Trandahl, who resigned shortly thereafter.

(H) But Shimkus kept his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), in the dark, along with the other Republican on the committee, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).

(I) Boehner originally said he had informed Hastert as well, But that subsequent pressure apparently caused Boehner to recant, and to help pressure the Washington Post to rewrite it’s own story to deliberately hide the rewriting.

(J) Nonetheless, Reynolds has independently said that Hastert was contacted.

(K) Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s resolution calling for an immediate investigation with a preliminary report in 10 days was effectively tabled, while the effect of delaying the investigation was hidden in media accounts.

(L) Speaker Hastert’s request for an FBI investigation was deliberately crafted to focus only on the IMs sent in 2003, and primarily on those outside the House—such as ABC reporters and their sources—thus directing attention entirely away from the institutional coverup that Hastert and the GOP House leadership had crafted for possibly as long as five years. The effect of Hastert’s request was not just hidden in the media, it was presented as a bold move for openness, calling for a full investigation.

(M) We have now entered the phase of a dispersed spin cycle. The central facts are deeply damning to the GOP, and so part of the effort involved is simply to disperse—attention, anger, understanding of what’s involved, everything, in fact. At the same time, those responsible for shaping GOP/conservative political are scrambling furiously to find the right unifying narratives that can save their bacon. Dispersion of attention must precede the roll-out of unifying narratives for the simple reason that they were neither ready to respond immediately, nor were they in a moral position to do so. The contradictions and betrayal simply cut too deep.

How Does This Help?

How do the concepts of moral panics and public coverups help us? The answer is simple: they provide a shared framework for making sense of the political landscape we find oursleves in. They help us make sense of what we are living through, and make it easier for us to talk to each other about it. But to do that, we need to flesh the concepts out a bit more by placing them in a larger perspective, and then saying a bit more about specifics.

Big Picture

The larger perspective is simple, really: traditional societies had relatively stable social hierarchies. Everyone knew their place. But as the pace of change in Western Europe began to accelerate with improvements in agriculture that made increased urbanization possible, a path of change was entered on that only grew more intense over the centuries that followed. Change inevitably meant disruption to established hierarchies, which occurred at many different levels and in many different ways. We know some of the major disruptions and subsequent reorientations fairly well. They have names like “The Renaissance,” “The Reformation,” “The Enlightenment,” and “The Industrial Revolution.” But there were many more hierarchy-disrupting changes than just these big ones. And through it all, there were some people who saw each disruption as a dire threat to God’s established order—they saw it, quite literally, as the work of the Devil.

Modern liberalism is very much a product of those changes, beginning with the Renaissance and it’s emphasis on humanism, on this-worldly concerns, and the celebration of humanity as created in the image of God. Religious tolerance was liberalism’s solution to the wars of the Reformation, which otherwise threatened to drown Europe in a sea of blood. And social contract theory was liberalism’s way of justifying the state from a bottom-up, pragmatic perspective, grounded in the consent of the governed, rather than a superstitious “Divine Right of Kings.”

All these different fundamental aspects of liberalism shared one thing: they were about coping with extraordinary social changes, minimizing the dangers they held, and maximizing the opportunities. While conservatives persisted in blaming liberals for catastrophic changes that turned their world upside down, liberals were all about making the best of things, and creating new ideas, new structures, new value systems in order to stabilize things without fighting the inevitability of change. In a very real way, liberalism was about creating the order and stability that conservatives longed for, but using a whole new set of tools to do it.

But the fixed hierarchies that conservatives worshiped were another matter entirely. These liberalism readily let go off. And not surprisingly, this is the real bone of contention between the two philosophies: Do we need a class of our “betters” to rule over us? Or can we rule ourselves?

This is what moral panics are all about: the periodic eruption of conservative emotion over perceived threats to the hierarchical order of things which they take to be divinely ordained. Some new social phenomena arises, symbolizing the rise of the untermenchen, and the “better sort” goes all a-twitter.

Conservatives aren’t the only ones with such feelings, of course. It’s partly a function of age. The 20-year old rebel grow up to be the 40-year old square, who still thinks the culture of their youth defines the very essence of hip, while their children’s culture is, well, quite possibly the stuff that moral panics of made of. We all know that individual anxieties raised by one thing can be channeled toward another, and so it is with moral panics for societies. Some people may be genuinely and primarily upset by the subject of the panic, but many more may have their social unease re-channeled from one object to another, as well as having it greatly amplified.

Public Coverups represent the reverse: instead of the rising of the untermenchen, it’s about the threatened fall of their betters, and preventing that from happening. Public coverups represent the parting of the raw desire to preserve power from the tissue of rationalizations normally used to justify power. They represent one long public lecture consisting of endless repetitions of a single sentence: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Little Picture

The final piece of how this helps is by making sense of the little picture. Moral panics and public coverups are mid-level phenomena that give coherence to typical sorts of political moves that see in smaller bits and pieces every day. For example, favorite rightwing rhetorical tactics—demonization, false dichotomy, ad hominem attacks, red herring and strawman arguments are all what might be called “native species” in the terrain of moral panics. They’re equally at home in public coverups—although they tend to show up more often in defensive, rather than an offensive role—along with denial, displacement, and appeal to authority.

More generally, we can think of moral panics and public coverups as two poles in the magnetic field of rightwing politics. Moral panics are the negative (South) pole, representing their attitudes toward despised outgroups. Public coverups are the postive (North) pole, representing their attitudes toward venerated ingroups. By observing the larger-than-life contradictions that emerge in these dramas we train ourselves on what to look for in the everyday torrent of rightwing lies, myths, and spin, as well as the media narratives that support them.

What To Look For

What should we expect in the days ahead? Primarily, more of the same of what we’ve already seen: blameshifting (everybody’s done something wrong except Denny Hastert!), misdirection (let’s investigate everyone except Denny Hastert!), mischaracterization (it’s just raunchy emails!), blaming Bill Clinton (blaming Bill Clinton!), and the kitchen sink (the kitchen sink? Yup! The kitchen sink!)

And, yes, we can expect the Democratic establishment to disappoint us with how they handle this. Don’t they always? But probably less than usual. On the plus side, this is much more of an opportunity for Democratic challengers to be heard, and they are much less infected by Democratic insideritis. But even more on the plus side is this: people are disgusted. At some point, what political elite has to say just ceases to matter, and for a good little chunk of the electorate, we’ve reached that point. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. They’ve had enough.

And that’s precisely what the peddlers of moral panics fear most of all.

Four Frames For The Foley Affair

2006-10-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

In a short diary at Dkos and elsewhere, Frameshop maestro Jeffrey Feldman has advanced the frame “Hastert Protected A Predator.” We could quibble a bit—perhaps “House Republicans Protected a Predator” would be better as a broad indictment of their entire leadership, perhaps not, since it’s too impersonal—but there’s no question that conceptually Jeffrey’s scored a direct hit. The question is—are there others?

Of course there are. And I’d like suggest three more in this diary. They’re not all for pushing as equally accessible media frames. Some are primarily for clarifying our own thinking, and just beginning to introduce them to a wider audience. Because, you see, frames are not just about how we communicate messages. They are also about how we think.

The frames discussed are:

Let's look at each of them.

Frame #1: “Hastert/House Republicans Protected A Predator”

While there are still plenty of folks around the internet who love to grouse about framing, Jeffrey Feldman’s Frameshop diaries have repeatedly providing the proof in the pudding. And this one—“Frameshop: Hastert ‘Protected A Predator’”—is no exception. It’s generally bad form to quote an entire diary. But this one is so brief, so focused, so compelling—so worthy of further exposure—that I’m going ahead and presenting the it in full (though without the almost identical photos of the two men that have to be seen to be believed, and the updates calling for action):

Fifty years from now, when historians write about the social problem of sexual predators in early 21st Century America, they will put a photo of Cardinal Bernard Law next to a photo of Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

These are men who had the chance to protect our children, but chose to protect a predator instead.

They did more than just fail as leaders--they endangered our families.

Like Cardinal Law, Hastert was the most powerful man in his Archdiocese--in this case, the United States Congress.

Like Cardinal Law, Hastert learned that a sexual predator was working for him--in this case a Congressman from Florida, not a parish priest.

And like Cardinal Law, Hastert chose to help the predator to protect the image of his organization instead of exposing the predator to protect America's children.

Protecting a sexual predator instead of protecting our children is a failure of leadership and a threat to the safety of America's families.

For Cardinal Law, this failure led to his resignation.

For Dennis Hastert the result must be the same.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives--the third most powerful person in our federal government--cannot keep his job now that America sees he knowingly protected a sexual predator.

Hastert protected his predator. And now that America knows--America must protect itself from Hastert.

The United States House of Representatives simply cannot survive with a leader who chose to protect a sexual predator rather than protect our children.

No more debate.

No more distraction.

Dennis Hastert must step down.

As a first-out-of-the-box frame for putting out our message, placing responsibility where it belongs, defining the debate and pressuring the GOP to respond, this frame defines the meaning of “A+”. The “House Leadership” variant doesn’t fit with this articulation, but works more as a follow-on, since Boehner, who would normally succeed Hastert, was implicated as well.

Of course, the GOP is still muddying the waters. Jeffrey’s frame speaks to that. It’s helpful, therefore, to take their “he didn’t know” defense and turn it against them—without, of course, accepting the premise.

Frame #2: “We Need Eagles, Not Ostriches”

As the House sexual predator scandal continues to shock the nation, Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders who failed to protect the young house pages are trying to defend themselves by saying they didn’t know—they didn’t know what was in the messages, they didn’t see them, they didn’t know that Foley was lying to them, they didn’t know there was more to the story, they didn’t know that other pages had been stalked and harassed, they didn’t know, they didn’t know, they didn’t know.

What comfort is that to the victims?

What’s almost as horrifying as the scandal itself is the fact that they think this is a defense. It was their job to know. And what they didn’t know, it was their job to find out.

At the first whiff of trouble, they should have been on red alert. All hands on deck. Instead, just like Bush and the warning, “bin Laden Determined to Strike US,” they went on vacation.

In fact, the Republican Congress has been on vacation for years. After 9/11, there should have been an immediate investigation—just as there was after Pearl Harbor. Instead, the Republican Congress was AWOL. Instead, the Republican Congress stonewalled. Instead, the Republican Congress looked away. Instead, the Republican Congress stuck their heads in the ground. It took an impassioned campaign by the widows of 9/11 to shame Congress into authorizing an outsourced investigation.

When the Bush Administration trumped up phony intelligence to rush us unprepared into war with Iraq with too few troops, too little body armor and no exit plan, the Republican Congress should have been asking hard questions before putting our troops in harm’s way. Instead, the Republican Congress was AWOL. Instead, the Republican Congress looked away. Instead, the Republican Congress stuck their heads in the ground.

When the Bush Administration sat around twiddling their thumbs while New Orleans drowned, there should have been an immediate Congressional investigation. Instead, the Republican Congress was AWOL. Instead, the Republican Congress looked away. Instead, the Republican Congress stuck their heads in the ground.

One sexually-harassed 16-year old is one victim too many left for the vultures by the ostriches in the GOP Congress. But the entire nation has been victimized by the ostriches in the GOP Congress.

We need eagles in Congress, not ostriches. We need Democrats, not Republicans.

Frame #3: “Investigate Now: Stop The Public Coverup”

Background: The concept of a public coverup is one that will take a long time to fully educate the public about. It has a long history—Ford’s pardoning of Nixon, the Iran/Contra investigations, the theft of the 2000 election, etc.

In the classic, full expression of these cases, there were three things: (1) Prima facie evidence of criminal behavior--either of statutory or political crimes (the "high crimes" of "high crimes and misdemeanors" fame.) (2) A pretence of investigation. (3) An obvious failure to fully investigate. Sometimes, the pretense of an investigation was simply dispensed with, while those who called for one were treated like psychotic lepers. But in any event the investigation was clearly understood to be primarily, if not entirely a matter of show, which is where we stand today.

The Frame Itself: Ever since it became public that a Republican Congressmember had been cyberstalking 16-year old House pages, the GOP House leadership has plunged itself into a contradiction-riddled public coverup, continuing the long-term coverup that kept the story hidden for nearly a year. Even with the affair exposed, their first instinct is not to protect the victims, but to protect themselves.

The longer they are allowed to continue their coverup in public, trying to get their stories straight with one another, the harder it will be to ever know the truth, and punish those responsible for failure to protect vulnerable teenagers in their care. To get the truth, and secure justice for possible victims we need an immediate outside investigation, and halt to the public coverup:

First Boehner said that Hastert was in the loop, while Hastert denied it. Then Boehner changed his story to let Hastert off the hook.[link link]
Then NRCC chair Rep. Tom Reynolds issued a statement confirming that he had informed Hastert about Foley in early 2006.[ link]
On Saturday, September 30, Hastert and his staff spent several hours crafting a statement giving their version of events. They claimed that no one except the page’s sponsor, Congressmember Rodney Alexander, had seen the emails.
But a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story the same day said that Rep. John Shimkus, who overseas the page program, saw the emails, and said, "That was enough for us to approach [Rep.] Mark [Foley]." Indeed, a statement issued by Shimkus the evening before—with the help of Hastert’s staff—said that he “took immediate action to investigate the matter” (in late 2005) and then goes on to describe the email contents. [ link]
At the same time, Steve Tomaszewski,, spokesman for Shimkus, told the Belleview News Democrat that Shimkus "did not see personally any e-mail a year ago when he dealt with the issue." [ link link]

Obviously the House Republican leadership is lying, trying to put together a new coverup on the fly, right out in the open, daring the American people to do anything about it. We need an immediate outside investigation, before they have any more time to get their stories straight or destroy any more evidence than they may already have gotten rid of.

Frame 4: “Corruption Is The Symptom, Conservatism Is The Disease”

Although he doesn’t put it in quite these terms, this frame was powerfully laid out in a diary by thereisnospoon, “It's Not Hypocrisy--It's What the Right is All About.” Here’s a summary, with some selected quotes:

This is not an isolated case of individual hypocrisy. "[W]hat Mark Foley has done is the perfect example of what "conservatism" is all about."

For liberals, humanity is flawed, but ultimately good. Yes, we have our flaws, our "selfish and destructive impulses" that "need regulation through a system of laws, checks and balances"

But we are also moral and ration, which allows us to improve, individually and collectively. “That's what being a 'progressive' is all about..."

This requires honest and openness in all things. “We demand that gay people be allowed to come out of the closet. That racism be studied honestly so that we may overcome it. That scientific inquiry be pursued, wherever it may lead.” And it means that private bad behavior is not just hypocrisy, but “hypocritical obscurantism [that] denies the possibility of real progress. Every hypocrite is a roadblock to a more honest, more open, more virtuous society."

On the other hand, conservatives believes just the opposite:

Humanity is wicked. We are evil creatures, “held together... only by the bonds of necessity.” In religion, their emphasis “is not on God's Love, but rather on Original Sin, and on the fires of Damnation.”

Because none of us is inherently good, the only thing that matters is that we act and appear to be good.:

Clinton's great crime, therefore, was NOT having an affair with an intern. To err is human. His crime was getting CAUGHT.

Men having sex with men isn't the problem--being OPEN about having sex with men is the problem. "Do it in your bedroom," they say, "but don't rub it in my face."

White-collar crime, behind spreadsheets, pay stubs and closed doors, is acceptable, because it is hidden. More open robbery and assault is unacceptable, to the conservative.

------------------------------------

And THAT is what the Foley business is all about. It is why Foley was a Republican in the first place.

Mark Foley was forced to cover up the fact that he was gay. He was forced into the closet. He could not seek counseling for his pedophilic urges. He could not, in short, be OPEN.

Instead, he was required by his Conservative philosophy to remain a Coward. To accept the "truth" of his "Evil." And to put the best possible face on his behavior.

And that's how he became the poster-boy for blatant, mind-blowing hypocrisy.

But we must keep forever in mind that this is NOT an isolated case. Mark Foley is not just the poster-body for hypocrisy. Mark Foley is, in fact, the poster-boy for CONSERVATISM.

The bottom line can be put even more simply: Liberals—whether secular or religious—believe in forgiveness and redemption, that they are available for all. Conservatives do not. They believe in forgiveness and redemption in a pinch. When one of their own gets caught. Newt Gingrich and his adultery. Bill Bennet and his gambling. Rush Limbaugh and his pills. But in general, they believe in wrathful God. They do not believe in Jesus, despite what their words may say. Their actions say otherwise. As the Bible say, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

There is much, much more to be said on this topic, as I suggest in my comment to thereisnospoon’s diary. My main point is that “conservatives believe in double-standards. Because they believe in two classes of people, for whom different rules apply.” I go on to discuss how this is illuminated by Social Dominance Theory, and Lakoff's Stirct Father/Nurturant Parent model. I write, in part:

Strict Father morality is primarily about strength to stand up to evil--but it doesn't actually produce the sort of autonomous moral individuals it is supposed to. So it is above all a matter of impressive displays. And, of course, since those who can pull off such displays know quite well that they can't maintain in private--and carry considerable self-loathing as a result--the projection of this self-loathing onto others (particularly those who don't obsessively strive to maintain in public) is a crucial part of their ego-defense mechanism.

In contrast, nurturant parent morality values strength as well, but it's strength in service to nurturance, which in turn is in service to a wide range of human capacities--for empathy, understanding, creativity, trust, intelligent, curiosity, etc. These are all the sorts of things that, in your explication, someone like Foley desperately needed, but could not access because of the ideology he was imprisoned by.

This is, necessarily, a more challenging frame to communicate. (It’s challenging even to grasp for ourselves.) It will take considerable time and effort to get it to sink in. But in the long run, it is most important, and fundamental frame of the four I have discussed.

Who Would Jesus Torture???

2006-09-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

This is, of course, the $64 billion question for a supposedly faith-based administration, supported by the self-annointed "religious" right:

Who

Matthew 5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Would

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Jesus

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Torture?

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Why is it that supposedly religious people, supposed followers of Christ, whose words I just quoted, are those most willing, even eager to torture people?

At least part of the answer comes from the work of Robert Altemeyer, who discovered and developed the concept of rightwing authoritarianism (RWA), which is defined thus:

Rightwing authoritarianism is the convergence of three attitudinal clusters in a person:

1. Authoritarian submission—a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression—a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities.
3. Conventionalism—a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.”

Over the years, Altemeyer has uncovered a fair number of correlations involving RWA, most of which can be grouped into four broad categories, (1) faulty reasoning, (2) hostility to outgroups, (3) profound character flaws and (4) blindness to one’s own filings and those of authority figures.

Character flaws include dogmatism, zealotry, hypocrisy, bullying, creation of intergroup conflict, and destructive competitiveness. Blindness includes the use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

The authoritarian relationship to religion is particularly troubling, as several different sorts of flaws tend to work together to blind authoritarians from seeing what they are doing. Perhaps most striking is the greater likelihood to compartmentalize their thinking, and not notice contradictions between compartmentalized beliefs. In a 1985 experiment, students were asked what they thought about two passages from the Gospels: “Do not judge, that you may not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. (Matthew 7:1), and “Let he who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” Altemeyer reports:

Twenty Christian Highs said we should take the teachings literally. Twenty-seven other Christian Highs said we should judge and punish others, but none of them explained how they reconciled this view with Jesus’ teachings. Apparently, they ‘believed’ both (contradictory) things. But the kicker came when I looked at various measures of authoritarian aggression I had gathered from these students. No matter what they said they believed, both these groups of Highs were quick with the stones on the Attitudes toward Homosexuals Scale, the ethnocentrism Scale, and Posse-Homosexuals (Enemies of Freedom, pp. 222-224).

In short, high RWA “Christians” have a much deeper belief in rightwing authoritarianism than they do in Christianity.

Matthew 7: 15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Okay, America. Time to wake up and smell the brimstone. By their fruits ye shall know them.

The Quasi-Cult Behind "The Path To 9/11"

2006-09-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

The story behind how “The Path to 9/11” (PT911) came to be made is still quite murky, so the degree of influence various individuals and entities had is very much up in the air. Nonetheless, it is certain that director David Cunningham had a lot of power—after all, directors usually do, and the producer’s own statements indicate he took a rather hands-off approach.

So who is the director, and what are the influences on him? This is surely a complicated investigative question for anyone with so little previous public record. But we do know this much:

Therefore, whatever other influences are involved in the production of PT911, the role of YWAM has to be considered as an important contributor. It’s all too easy for those left of center to refer to the “religious right” as a sort of short-hand, but this is often politically foolish when we are dealing with specific groups or individuals whose beliefs and practices are strikingly at odds with what the majority of Christians believe—or sometimes even with what the majority of rightwing Christians believe.

For example, journalist Robert Parry, who broke the Iran-Contra scandal while working for AP in 1986, has written extensively about the Reverand Sun Yung Moon, in a series, 'Dark Side of Rev. Moon'.

The summary of one of Parry’s story’s “Buying the Right”, reads:

Rev. Sun Myung Moon calls America "Satan's harvest" and vows to subjugate its people under a Korea-based theocracy. Normally, this anti-Americanism would not sit well. But Moon has spread around billions of dollars from mysterious sources to Washington conservatives. The money has helped key allies, such as Jerry Falwell and Oliver North. It's the real Asian money scandal -- and the Washington media is missing it. (8/11/97)

A brief segment of this story reads as follows:

Better than Jesus?

Falwell also might have been shy about disclosing his alliance with Moon because the Korean's theology upsets many Christians. Moon asserts that Satan corrupted mankind by sexually seducing Eve in the Garden of Eden and that only through sexual purification can mankind be saved. In line with that doctrine, Moon says Jesus failed in his mission to save mankind because he did not procreate.

Moon sees himself as a second messiah who will not make the same mistake. He has engaged in sex with a variety of women over the decades. The total number of his offspring is a point of debate inside the Unification Church.

Moon's rhetoric has turned stridently anti-American, another problem for the Religious Right and its strongly patriotic positions. On May 1, 1997, Moon told a group of followers that "the country that represents Satan's harvest is America." [ Unification News, June 1997] In other sermons, he has vowed that his victorious movement will "digest" any American who tries to maintain his or her individuality. He especially has criticized American women who must "negate yourself 100 percent" to be a receptacle for the male seed. [For details of Moon's speeches, see The Consortium, July 28, 1997]

Clearly, when we are dealing with a figure like Moon, it is a mistake to use the label “religious right,” as it helps to paper over the fact that his actual teachings are deeply anathema to vast majority of followers of the religious right—even if their mamon-crazed leaders feel differently.

And so we turn to look at YWAM with the lesson of Moon in mind. I do not wish to equate the two. YWAM is nowhere near the blatantly anti-Christian ideology of Moon and his Unification Church. But neither is it a perfectly normal missionary organization, like the missionary outreach of any long-standing denomination. Founded in 1960 by Loren Cunningham, it claims a staff of thousands in over a hundred countries. Two types of charges against it are significant for our consideration: its theology and its cult-like aspects. Both are potentially significant in terms of potential influence on the nature of PT911.

Evidence of YWAM’s Questionable Theology

In “The False God & Gospel of Moral Government Theology”, E. Calvin Beisner, an author and theologian with Christian Research Institute, and himself a solid member of the religious right, describes Moral Government Theology and its association with YWAM—an association the YWAM denies.

In the summary, Beisener says:

Moral government theology (MGT), rooted in the philosophical definition of freedom as the "power of contrary choice," denies the fundamental Christian doctrines of God's perfection in knowledge, goodness, and power; original sin; human moral inability; the substitutionary satisfaction of God's justice in Christ's atoning death; redemption; and justification by the crediting of Christ's righteousness to believers by grace through faith apart from works. As documented in this article, these denials are unbiblical and are so serious as to warrant classifying MGT as non-Christian.

In the body of the article he explains:

Contemporary moral government theology is principally the brainchild of the late Gordon C. Olson. During the 1930s and 1940s, Olson's studies led him to believe that God's foreknowledge is necessarily limited by human free will and that the classical doctrines of original sin, human depravity and moral inability, the Atonement, and justification were as wrong as the classical doctrine of absolute foreknowledge.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Olson and an engineering associate of his named Harry Conn began to teach moral government theology for various mission organizations, often in recruiting, motivating, or training young people. Moral government theology (hereafter MGT) first began to spread rapidly when Olson and Conn became regular speakers for Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which has since become one of the larger youth missionary organizations in the world. Contrary to YWAM's repeated denials that MGT was an important part of its teaching, it was in YWAM training that tens of thousands of students from the late 1970s through the 1980s, and some even into the 1990s, learned MGT (although today some YWAM leaders speak against MGT).

Clearly, it is not alleged that YWAM still teaches this theory. However, the fact that they once did (even though they now deny it) is evidence that we should not casually lump them in with the rest of the religious right. Some on the religious right clearly accept them, but some obviously do not. So why help them by lumping them all together? It’s best to describe them as they are—which is, at least, as a controversial organization, as we shall see more fully in the next section.

Evidence of YWAM’s Cult-Like Features

Any discussion of churches and cults is bedeviled by the difficulties of subjective judgment, since there is real truth in the claim that “one man’s cult is another man’s religion.” Yet, some examples of religious cults are so clear that no one (except their members, of course!) can deny what they are. YWAM is clearly not one of those. But it does have a record of clearly cult-like activities, and has been investigated as such on several occasions.

The most comprehensive set of writings on it I’ve been able to find online comes from the Rick A. Ross Institute of New Jersey (RRI), which describes its mission thus:

RRI's mission is to study destructive cults, controversial groups and movements and to provide a broad range of information and services easily accessible to the public for assistance and educational purposes.

RRIs main page on YWAM contains links to its own comprehensive report, as well as testimonies by two former members, a family-member of a YWAM member, an overseas missionary with extensive experience of YWAM, a critical news story from New Zealand, and a positive one from Florida.

The comprehensive report—by Ross himself—begins with a brief description of WYAM, then continues:

During the month of September 1990, I was contacted and subsequently retained by a family in Long Island New York. Their concerns centered upon their adult single daughter's involvement with the organization known as Youth With A Mission (YWAM). She planned to enter a Discipleship Training School (at a cost of $1700.00) operated by YWAM in late September located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. After completing the training program she might then be selected as a staff member (full time missionary) at the salary of $7.00 per week.

The young woman could be placed within the third world. Once placed she would be totally dependent upon YWAM for financial support, food, medical attention and security. She had liquidated all her assets. The family accepted fully their daughter's religious commitment, but felt that they should investigate YWAM. My work on their behalf consisted of gathering information.

The report combines a description of the specifics of the case, including interactions with a high-ranking YWAM official, as well as a digest of material Ross uncovered in his background research. The picture that emerges is definitely disturbing, but deserves to be read in full. However, toward the end of the report, Ross offers an analytical perspective that is worth reproducing in full:

There is an evident pattern to all the complaints about Youth With A Mission. If these statements are accurate, (which they seem to be) YWAM practices the so-called "sheperding" leadership method. Implementing direct control over their members through "discipleship" training. This training appears to employ recognized techniques of thought reform and mind control as listed by Robert J. Lifton in his "eight criteria" (see The Future of Immorality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, New York, Basics Books, 1987).

This can be seen clearly through a comparison of those eight criteria to the practices employed at YWAM DTS facilities.

* "Milieu control; essentially the control of communication within an environment." This appears to be accomplished at the DTS through the school's relative isolation from the outside world. Also, through rules concerning dating, television, discussion alone with other new members and communication with family. Another example of "milieu control" would be "group leader's" influence during "intercession". Lifton seems to be describing YWAM DTS when he states that "there is often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures and group encounters, which become increasingly intense..."

* "Mystical manipulation; a systematic process that is planned and managed from above (by the leadership) but appears to have arisen spontaneously within the environment." This process seems to occur through "intercession" when one receives a "confirmation" through Bible verses (step 8) or when "God…brings things to your mind" (step 9). Also, when "group leaders" receive a "word from the Lord". The profound influence exercised by leadership during "intercession" probably promulgates these seemingly spontaneous spiritual experiences.

* "The demand for purity; radical separation of pure and impure, of good and evil, within an environment and within oneself." This can be seen through several steps within "intercession" (steps 1,3,4). A YWAM lecturer "reasoned that there are three kinds of thought: yours, Satan's and God's". There is no gray area. Everything is black and white. As Lifton relates the group has a "Manichean quality".

* "The cult of confession; a confession process that has its own structure…accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups." Confession seems to be the most prevalent feature of "intercession". DTS students said "confession emotionally exhausted us". Students who had nothing to confess were told they were "guilty for not confessing anything".

* "Sacred science; a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology." Again, the process of "intercession" seems to be the "sacred science" of YWAM. This technique within the overall structure of "discipleship" can be "the truth" for every person involved. It can be seen as the science by which every student can become "clean: and reach God (steps 1,2,3).

* "Loading of the language; literalization of language-words or images becoming God. A simple slogan to which the most complex and otherwise difficult questions can be reduced. The language of non-thought." Phrases such as "openness and brokeness, causing disunity, being rebellious, give up your rights, with the appointing comes the anointing and don't say it, pray it are just a few examples of the "thought terminating cliches" reportedly used within YWAM. These slogans could discourage questions, individuality and critical thinking.

* "Doctrine over person; one must find the truth of the dogma and subject one's experiences to that truth… doubts are reflections of one's own evil." This can be seen in (step 3) "die to your own imagination". The students at the DTS are asked to subject their experiences to that of the "group leader". The doctrine of "intercession" comes before individual rights. They were told "give up your rights" and "you get the leader you deserve". They must be part of the whole "in God's Kingdom there is structure".

* "Dispensing of existence; those who have not embraced that truth…are bound up with evil and do not have the right to exist. There is a being verses nothingness dichotomy." Nancy Brown stated that YWAM depicted the "world" as "Satanic". "Bind Satan" and "deal aggressively with the enemy (step 6)". All thoughts could be labeling dispenses with the individual thought and the outside world as evil. Ultimately, when one student decided to quit a YWAM DTS, her group leader said, "well, at least God never quits on us". Somehow she had rejected God by leaving YWAM.

One very disturbing feature of YWAM is its seeming inability to engage in open dialogue. Mr. Savoca [the WYAM higher-up Ross interacted with] never really responded to any concerns. He was evasive and finally fled rather than answer specific questions. This would lead to the conclusion that YWAM has little if any intention of changing.

Now, keep in mind, Cunningham is not just a product of this environment, and a promoter of it. He is the son of the founder of it. Everything about this description seems to mitigate against the ability to make a fair-minded film. Indeed, the very idea of a fair-minded film would appear to be anathema to such a mindset.

With this list before us, there should be little doubt about how Monica Lewinski came to be such a central figure in 9/11—"The demand for purity" says it all. But more than sexual purity is involved here. “There is no gray area. Everything is black and white.” This is how Bush thinks, and so it is no wonder that his failings are excused. Note—I’m not saying this is the reason for why the film is as it is. There are surely many contributing factors. But I am saying it’s a powerful reason why it isn’t as it should be.

Similarly, the principle of "Doctrine over person" helps explain why the facts and intelligence were fixed around the policy that Clinton, not Bush, was to blame for 9/11, since Bush was pure and Clinton was not. “one must find the truth of the dogma and subject one's experiences to that truth.”

Finally, regarding "Loading of the language" intended to “discourage questions, individuality and critical thinking.” Loaded language is hardly limited to mind-control cults. They are, however, extremely sensitive to its potential. With that in mind, consider how Cunningham responded recently:

According to Cunningham, critics are simply taking scenes out of context or relying on a competing set of experts. Here’s what Cunningham told The Crimson White, a University of Alabama newspaper:
“A lot of these critics haven’t seen the whole thing or, in some cases, any of it,” Cunningham said.

“We have these CNN pundits who haven’t seen it who are taking scenes out of context as examples [of factual inaccuracies in the film].”

Cunningham also pointed out that the critics, many of whom are Democrats, are just telling their side of the story.

“We have out [sic] CIA consultants and Clinton has his. It’s kind of a ‘he said, she said’ situation right now,” Cunningham said.

At one level, this is simply typical rightwing spin. But at another level it is rather adroit use of language to “discourage questions, individuality and critical thinking” that is almost certainly second nature to Cunningham, given his upbringing and who he is.

The emblematic phrases he uses aren’t even rationally related to the charges. There is no way that a false, defamatory scene can be altered by context. Nor does it involve conflicting experts to note how a film script clashes with its purported source material. A sixth grade reading level will more than suffice for that. This is the use of language as talisman, to magically stop the process of critical thinking.

Keep in mind, this is only a brief, initial peek behind the curtain at the sort of organizational world in which Cunningham was born and raised. There is bound to be much, much more for us to learn about YWAM and how it influenced the making of PT911.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5F

2006-08-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Abortion: A Summing Up

This concludes the abortion section of my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. This is the last of 6 sub-parts. [Links at end of post.]

At the end of the last post, I noted:

If abortion is murder, there are no extenuating circumstances.

This is, however, an extreme minority position, much like opposition to welfare state spending.

One key to reactionaries’ success is their ability to tap into extremist emotions, but escape responsibility for doing so—whether in stirring up violence or in launching arguments whose conclusions they shy away from. The position that abortion is murder does both these things. Here, we fix our gaze on the reactionaries’ extremist game, and what it says about who’s really out of touch with the American mainstream.

A Fringe Minority

As I repeated just above, the position that abortion is murder (not homicide—which can justifiable, in the case of rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life, for example—but murder) is a fringe minority position, much like opposition to welfare state spending. In fact, it’s even more of a fringe position. A mere 8.1% of the population opposes abortion in all three cases in the AbThreat scale during the most recent timeframe.

It’s even more revealing if we put these two conditions together: opposition to welfare state spending and to all abortions on the AbThreat scale. The NatSpend6Sp scale measures attitudes toward six welfare state spending questions. Running cross-tabs between NatSpend6Sp and AbThreat yields the following:

The bold numbers are percentages. In the lower right-hand corner, the intersection of two fringe positions—one 16.6%, the other 6.4% (a bit lower than the 7.3% in the total survey population)—comes out to just 1.2%. This is the percentage of people who hold two key movement conservative positions: that abortion is murder, and that the welfare state should be cut. In contrast, the two boxes in the upper left-hand corner total to 55.9%. That’s the intersection of those wanting to increase welfare state spending and supporting abortion in all three cases in the AbThreat scale. That’s the liberal position that’s “out of touch with the American people,” according to folks in the 1.2% lower right-hand corner.

It’s amazing how much power these people have, given how marginal their attitudes are. They have been the driving force behind 30+ years of culture war, that has produced remarkably little over-all change in levels of support and opposition to abortion rights. And yet they remain a tiny fringe.

Questioning The Fringe

Part of the key to their power is simply that it’s never questioned. Reactionaries claim to be conservatives, and nobody questions them, really. By constantly demonizing liberals as “other,” they automatically draw attention away from the gaps that divide them, not just from the mainstream of American opinion, but from the mainstream of conservative opinion—the very body of opinion that they claim to represent, and have the most prominent influence over. Yet, for all their influence, they cannot convince a majority of self-identified conservatives to do away with the welfare state, or to oppose all abortions. Indeed, they can only maintain their positions of power and influence by hiding the full implications of these positions.

Consider what it means to call abortion murder. If that is so, then there are tens of millions of murderesses running around the country. If we were to take this seriously, America would have virtually no other industry except for the prison-industrial complex. The task of apprehending, convicting and imprisoning so many people would take up almost all of our national resources. Does anyone seriously advocate this? No. Of course not. To do so is to reveal the utter absurdity of the position.

One does not have to like abortion even a little to recognize that it is not murder. We do not treat it as murder because we cannot treat it as murder. However fervently a small minority of people may feel, if society were to act as if it were murder, society itself would fall apart.

Even the anti-choice leadership knows this, and so they resort to deception and bluff. They continue using the language of murder, but their aim is not to punish abortion as murder. Their aim, instead, is mass intimidation, for it is the only by intimidating women who want and need an abortion that they can be prevented en masse from getting one. And what kind of society can we be, living in such a state of mass intimidation?

Law & Morality: Separation Strengthens Both

The root problem here really is a confusion of law and morality, which in turn is a reflection of (not the same as) the confusion of church and state. The reasons for keeping them separate are diverse, but one reason should be crystal clear: too much mixing of the two undermines both of them. This was the view set out by John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration. As the Dictionary of the History of Ideas entry on liberalism explains:

Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), shorter
than Bayle's Commentary and more popular and less abstract than Spinoza's argument in the Tractatus, is the classical apology for liberty of conscience....

The proper business of civil government, according to Locke, is to protect and promote men's interests. Though everyone has the right to try to persuade others to hold beliefs which he thinks are true and important, nobody has the right to use force to that end. The civil magistrate has no authority from either God or man to require anyone to profess or refrain from professing a belief on the ground that it is true or false, necessary to salvation or incompatible with it. It is not for him to dispute with his subjects or to persuade them to a particular religion. Even if he could force them to adhere to it, he would not thereby save their souls, for salvation depends on a free adherence to what is true. A church is no more than an association of men who come together to worship God in the manner they think acceptable to him, and no church can claim authority from God to be the only teacher of the true faith. Like any other voluntary association it may make rules for its members, may admonish and exhort them, and may expel them for disobeying the rules. But it may not deprive them of their civil rights, or of any rights other than those they acquire by joining it, nor may it call upon the civil power to do so. No belief is to be suppressed merely because it is heretical, nor any practice merely because it is offensive to God. No doubt, what is offensive to God is sinful, but what is sinful is not punishable by man. No man deserves punishment at the hands of other men, unless he has offended some man, unless he has invaded his rights.

Locke, in this Letter, seems at times to come close to saying what J. S. Mill was to say long afterwards: that men are answerable to civil authority only for their harmful and not their immoral actions. Yet he does not say it outright, nor even clearly imply it.

What he does say is that all beliefs are to be tolerated “unless they are contrary to human society” or to moral rules “necessary to the preservation of civil society.” This is not a clear saying. What is to be reckoned contrary to human society or necessary to the preservation of civil society?

Indeed, these are not easily-answered questions. But the simple fact that abortion has been widely legalized for 30 years or more counts heavily against any argument that tolerating a belief in abortion rights falls into either category. To the contrary, as pointed out above, it is the outlawing of abortion that would create a state of mass intimidation incompatible with our notions of a free and democratic society.

Laws must stand by the consent of the governed, freely given, or respect for law in general will suffer for it. But morality can and must strike out for what is seen as right, however few agree. The two represent distinctly different approaches toward changing human behavior. A widely disrespected law, based on moral arguments, undermines respect for both.

What liberalism stands for, more than any particular result, is the unfettered exploration of multiple different perspectives and chains of thought. This can deeply frustrate those who are guided by a simple moral vision. But America was founded in the aftermath of bloody religious wars that scarred the face of Europe. Moral certainty had produced a bloodbath lasting for decades—this was the background against which Locke wrote, and the background against which our Founding Fathers took his lead. We had excellent reasons to divide the realms of morality and legality, allowing for influence, but not straightforward dictatorship.

Seeking Common Ground

The battle cry that abortion is murder is just one form in which that founding wisdom of our nation is attacked. It is good that so few truly believe in it. It is bad that so many are deceived by it. There is another way. A recent Pew Poll found a desire for common ground:

Abortion continues to split the country nearly down the middle. But there is consensus in one key area: two out of three Americans (66%) support finding "a middle ground" when it comes to abortion. Only three-in-ten (29%), by contrast, believe "there's no room for compromise when it comes to abortion laws." This desire to find common ground extends broadly across the political and ideological spectrum.

Majorities of Republicans (62%), Democrats (70%) and political independents (66%) favor a compromise. So do majorities of liberals, moderates and conservatives. More than six-in-ten white evangelicals also support compromise, as do 62% of white, non-Hispanic Catholics.

Only one group expressed unwillingness to find a middle way. Two-thirds (66%) of those who support an outright ban on abortion say there should be no compromise. In contrast, two-thirds of those who want abortion to be generally available are ready to seek an accommodation.

Those who support an outright ban represent just 11% of population. Two thirds of that is roughly 8%. Every other group predominantly favors finding a consensus. It won’t be easy, especially with 30+ years of rightwing-sponsored culture wars behind us, and all the misinformation and disinformation that entails. There are a lot of myths and outright lies to undo. But the desire to find common ground is very much an affirmation of what liberal democracy is all about. It’s what sets us apart from the theocratic tradition that America broke with at its founding, and that animates our most threatening enemies today. It’s a good sign. And it’s a further sign that liberals are much more in tune with America’s mainstream than reactionary “movement conservatives” are.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to the previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3 shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4 looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.
Part 5A “The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years” began the 6-part look at abortion.
Part 5B A big-picture snapshot of abortion attitudes.
Part 5C Changes in abortion attitudes over three time-spans.
Part 5D: Abortion, party and ideology over three time-spans.
Part 5E: Abortion and Church Attendance

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5E

2006-08-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

Abortion and Church Attendance

This continues the abortion section of my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. This is the fifth of 6 sub-parts. [Links at end of post.] It examines attitudes towards abortion in light of church attendance.

While there are strong correlations between church attendance and abortion attitudes, these have tended to be relatively stable over time. The shifts in opinion are generally modest, and surprisingly uniform at the national level—particularly in contrast to the strong pattern of opinion that remains basically unchanged—regular churchgoers are far less supportive of abortion overall than all other groups, who are relatively close to one another. There are, however, two exceptions, which provide some significant insight.

We begin by looking at the ABThreat Scale:

On the AbThreat scale, nationwide across all time periods, 60.3% of regular churchgoers support abortion in all three cases, compared to 77.9% among frequent churchgoers, 85.3% among rare churchgoers and 86.3% among non-churchgoers. The gap between regular and frequent churchgoers is 17.6%, more than double the 8.4% gap between frequent churchgoers and non-churchgoers. This further undermines the claim that secular Americans are out of the mainstream. What’s more, the gap between regular churchgoers and everyone is growing. In the last timeframe, it was closing in on 20%.

Next we look at the AbAutonomy scale:

On the AbAutonomy scale, nationwide across all time periods, the figures for abortion in all four cases are 17.3% for regular churchgoers, 34.4% for frequent churchgoers, 44.3% for rare churchgoers and 51.5% for non-churchgoers. In this case, the 17.1% gap between regular and frequent churchgoers is exactly equal to the gap between frequent and non-churchgoers. (In the last timeframe, however, frequent churchgoers were closer to non-churchoers—a 15.9% gap—than to regular churchgoers—a 17.4% gap.)

However, the relative percentages again show regular churchgoers to be farther removed: 34.4% is 99% higher than 17.3%, but 51.5% is just 50% higher than 34.4%.

Furthermore, as Robert Friedman pointed out in an earlier comment on this series, church attendance appears to be overstated on opinion polls. This makes it quite likely that if we could weed out the false churchgoing reports, this group would diverge even further from the rest of America, since the false churchgoers are probably more similar to frequent or rare churchgoers in their attitudes.

Two Telling Shifts In Opinion

With only two exceptions, the shifts in opinion for all attendance groups for all options were within two percent of the average opinion shift for all groups. The first exception was regular churchgoers on the AbThreat scale, dropping 8.1% in support for abortion in all three cases—5.9% greater than the average 2.2% drop. The churchgoers’ level of support was already low—63.9% compared to the next-lowest level of 78.2%. It dropped to 55.8%, compared to the next lowest level of 75.1%. This is due to a 13.7% drop in the white South, compared to a 5.9% drop in the rest of the country:

As we can see, this drop was due to something surprising—the fact that white Southern regular churchgoers were about 8 points more supportive of abortions in this category than their counterparts outside the white South. This gap has now closed. And the closing of that gap produces far and away the largest change over this period of time.

It’s hard to believe that this change was caused by secular humanists—to put it mildly. But if this change is hard to square with the “blame liberal secular humanists” narrative, the next change is even more at odds with it. You see, it seems that they’re getting slightly more conservative.

The second exception was non-churchgoers on the AbAutonomy scale, decreasing in support for all 4 cases by 0.5%, compared to an average 4.9% increase in support—the exact opposite of what the conservative narrative would have us believe about those godless heathen secular humanists. This is entirely due to a 2.6% decrease outside the white South, compared to an average 3.6% increase—as gap of 6.2%:

Within the white South, they were relatively normal, increasing 1.1% more than the average, which was skewed sharply lower by the regular churchgoers:

The most plausible explanation for this shift is that the expanded ranks of new non-churchgoers are more like their parents or former selves, and less like the pre-existing non-churchgoers. But this is sheer speculation.

In contrast, the first shift seems easy to account for: the refrain equating abortion with murder has often been repeated in churches. This would account for reducing support for abortions resulting from rape, or threatening the life or health of the mother or the fetus: If abortion is murder, there are no extenuating circumstances.

This is, however, an extreme minority position, much like opposition to welfare state spending. We’ll consider the fringe nature of this position, among other things, in the last abortion post.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to the previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3 shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4 looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.
Part 5A “The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years” began the 6-part look at abortion.
Part 5B A big-picture snapshot of abortion attitudes.
Part 5C Changes in abortion attitudes over three time-spans.
Part 5D: Abortion, party and ideology over three time-spans.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5D

2006-08-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

Party, Ideology and Abortion

Introduction

This continues the abortion section of my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. This is the fourth of 6 sub-parts. [Links at end of post.]

We return to the abortion scales introduced in Part 5A, to both create a sort of snapshot encapsulation of the individual question data presented in the previous post, and to add the refinement of looking at political identity—party and ideology combined. Here, we will downplay the tables of numbers we’ve been using, leading with the visual impact of graphs.

* The AbThreat Scale *

In the first chart, of the AbThreat scale nationwide, by party and ideology (political identity) we see an initial condition with no real trend, out of which a sawtooth pattern emerges, and then develops a somewhat more distinct slope:

At first, independents and Republicans are slightly more supportive than Democrats in all three ideological orientations—a significant fact that is easily forgotten today. (See table below, first column.) Liberal independents are noticeably more supportive of abortion in all three cases (the red line) than are liberal Democrats. But the differences were slight, and the shape of the red curve shows no larger pattern. There is a hint of the saw-tooth pattern that’s about to emerge, but the differences are slight, and liberal Republicans are less supportive than moderate Republicans, making it impossible to see a sawtooth without projecting it into the data.

In the second time-period, the sawtooth is unmistakable—a sign of ideology taking precedence over party. Thus, it is not Democrats who are emerging as distinctly more pro-abortion on the ABThreat scale—it is liberals So much so, in fact, that there is an imperfection in the classic sawtooth form: The liberal independents still represent a high-point of support, which means that the highest points of the saw tooth not only fail to fall into line—they actually change direction. Indeed, with that one exception, there seems to be little difference among liberals, moderates and conservatives of different partisan orientations. All the conservatives have about the same level of support, as do all the moderates as well as the liberal Democrats and the liberal Republicans.

This sort of arrangement is quite common in American politics, because our politics has generally been much less ideological than that of other countries. This is also a reason why it’s not very effective for Democrats to “move to the center.” The independents closest to the Democratic Party are generally more liberal than conservative Democrats are. On the ABThreat scale they are dramatically more liberal, in fact.

This cross-cutting of party and ideology generally tends to have a conservative effect, preventing the sort of broad systemic change that liberalism advances. The protracted nature of the culture wars—with abortion as the most central and enduring manifestation—is partly just a manifestation of how American politics tends to work in general. Battles go on for a long, long time, because there are many other allegiances that work at cross-purposes. It’s precisely the opposite of the polarization we’re constantly told about. Of course, we are experiencing more polarization than usual. But that’s still not very much in the grand scheme of things. The rhetoric of polarization far exceeds the reality.

In the third time-period, the sawtooth remains, again a bit imperfectly. But the partisan slant just hinted at before is also present—the first clear sign that ideological polarization is becoming partisan as well, though not to the same extent. Support has dropped significantly among both liberal and conservative Republicans, while liberal Democrats have pulled even with liberal independents.

Thus, in this stage, we finally have a rather mild version of the pattern that Ender claimed for the early 1980s in the comment that first instigated this series. For the first time, liberal Democrats are no longer more conservative on abortion than liberal independents. But this result at this late date clearly refutes Ender’s thesis that liberal Democrats were the engine driving this change.

Another way to look at this same data is to rearrange it, grouping liberals together on the left, subdivided into Democrats, Independents and Republicans, followed by moderates, and then conservatives. The first grouping was by party, then ideology. This is a grouping by ideology, then party. The emergence of the sawtooth in the first view is reflected in the emergence of definite slope in this second view:

The slope that emerges above still has an interruption, when we get to moderate Republicans, who are more pro-choice than moderate independents. The slope is also relatively modest. That’s to be expected. After all, there just isn’t that much difference in views. There is overwhelming support for abortion in the cases on the AbThreat scale.

* The AbAutonomy Scale *

To get a view of where real divisions lie, we have to turn to AbAutonomy. Here is what the party/ideology view looks like:

[Corresponding Figures in Table Below]

Here we see a similar sort of progression as we did with AbThreat, but we appear to begin in the middle of the process, where a sawtooth pattern has already emerged, and we end up farther along in the process, with a much more pronounced downward-slope. At the same time, the different curves grow closer together—a reflection of the large-scale pattern noted above, that the extreme positions increased slightly at the expense of already-much smaller numbers taking middle positions We begin with the liberal independent peak higher than the liberal Democrat peak on all four lines. Even the liberal Republican peak is higher at the top line (supporting abortion in 1 or more cases), though only by a whisker. Moderate independents and Republicans are nearly dead-even, about five points above moderate Democrats, and the same pattern holds for conservatives as well—though with a larger Democratic gap.

The overall result is that independents are most liberal, followed by Republicans, then Democrats—a strikingly different constellation than we have today. Of course, this does not automatically mean that the parties as a whole were aligned this way. The balance of liberals, moderates and conservatives was quite different in the two parties. Yet, as we’ve already seen above, this pattern generally did hold, even though conservatives were a far more significant block among Republicans.

The second time-frame still has independents as the most liberal, but Democrats and Republicans are much closer together. Liberal Democrats are clearly more liberal than liberal Republicans, but moderates and conservatives rank about the same.

The most significant change in the third time-frame is the sharp plunge among conservative Republicans. The percent supporting all 4 options drops five percent, while the range from total support to supporting just one option also tightens five percent, resulting in a total drop of ten percent for those supporting one or more options. Since conservative Republicans also continued to expand their share of the population, this constitutes a significant development. At the same time, moderate Republican support for abortion in all four cases increased about five percent, increasing the cumulative support for fewer options., but with diminishing impact at the “one or more” level. The only other change approaching it is that moderate and conservative Democrats both gained about five percent in support of abortion, pretty much across the boards.

If we flip our perspective to ideology-then-party, we see a familiar pattern: a gradual progression towards a consistent downward slope, which is interrupted by moderate Republicans, who are more pro-choice than moderate independents:

The initial state is more structured, a slight variant on the familiar sawtooth pattern, while the third state has a more pronounced slope than ABThreat had—a reflection of the fact that there’s a greater diversity of opinion among the four questions on the AbAutonomy scale, and greater polarization as well.

* AbAutonomy & The White South *

Finally, if we look at the white South, we find a slightly different pattern, from beginning to end, but the rest of the country shows a pattern almost identical to that of the country as a whole.

White South / Rest of Country / Nationwide:

The white South has sharper contrasts in general, due to lower levels of support amongst all groups except for liberal independents and Democrats. The lines are closer together as well, a further sign of polarizing, since it means that fewer people take intermediate positions between supporting or opposing abortion in all four cases:

This is a crucial point. Because of the concentration of conservative Republicans in the white South, opinions there appear more monolithic. But there is actually more polarization within the white South than there is outside of it. We saw this already in the figures for the individual questions. Lower levels of agreement equate with more polarization. And the white South had lower levels of agreement on every question in the last time-frame. This is yet another indication that it is conservative Republicans who are driving polarization, not liberal Democrats.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to the previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3 shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4 looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.
Part 5A “The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years” began the 6-part look at abortion.
Part 5B A big-picture snapshot of abortion attitudes.
Part 5C Changes in abortion attitudes over three time-spans

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5C

2006-08-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Abortion: Changes Over Three Time-Spans

Introduction

This continues the abortion section of my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. This is the third of 6 sub-parts. [Links at end of post.] Abortion is very important, as it represents the first long-lived social wedge issue supplanting the role of race, which has since slipped into the background. It is only such issue that has robust GSS polling from the early 1970s to date.

This post takes a look at the data across three timeframes in order to understand the changes that have taken place. While the anti-choice movement has produced little net change in attitudes, it has re-arranged the structure of such attitudes—particularly in the white South. Polarization has increased, but agreement still outweighs disagreement between parties and between ideological orientations.

Little Change In Net Support

In the last post, we concluded with a look at abortion views on 7 questions that have been asked repeatedly as part of the General Social Survey since the 1970s. Levels of agreement were high—ranging from 77.9% to 93.8%. In the white South, it went even higher—up to 95.2%. This overall view, however, masks considerable change over the three time periods we’ve used to break down the data (1972-1984, 1985-1993 and 1998-2004), as we’ll see in a moment. First, however, it’s important to note there was relatively little net change. As mentioned previously in this series, the two sets of questions are quite distinct, and can be used to create distinct indices—AbThreat and AbAutonomy, each measuring the number of cases for which an individual supports the right to choose an abortion.

We will use these scales more in future parts. But for now, we’ll just use them for a quick peak to establish the lack of dramatic change. If we look at the results for all three time frames (both nationwide and divided between the white South and the rest of the country) we find shifts of only a few percentage points, which are mostly indicative of increased polarization on the AbAutonomy scale, and a very slight increase in the low level of complete opposition on the AbThreat scale.

First, the ABThreat Scale:

The only notable shift is a slight increase in those supporting abortion in no case, with a comparable decline in those supporting abortion in all three cases. The “no case” increase is 2.5% in the white South, 1.0% elsewhere.

Yet, those supporting abortion in “no case” on the AbThreat scale remain a tiny fraction of the population—just under 1/12th, to be precise. This small fraction is the real maximum size of the anti-choice hardcore. This is the maximum number of those convinced that abortion is murder. Anyone who makes an exception for rape, birth defects, or health of the mother clearly does not believe that abortion is murder—regardless of what they may otherwise say. They believe that abortion is, at worst, homicide, which includes the category of justifiable homicide.

There is, of course, good reason to think that most of that 8% actually doesn’t think that abortion is murder. Few of them, for example, would seriously suggest executing women who get an abortion. This is further evidence that abortion as a political issue is significantly deceptive, however passionately individuals may feel about it.

Things are a little more complex with the AbAutonomy scale—both extremes gain slightly at the expense of the middle:

Again, the shifts are greater in the White South. Those supporting abortion in all 4 cases increased 6.4% in the white South, compared to 3.6% in the rest of the country. Those opposing abortion in all 4 cases increased 5.1% in the white South, compared to 2.2% in the rest of the country.

Polarization Changes Over Time

But if the levels of support and opposition remained fairly stable, the levels of polarization did not. For that, we return to the question-by-question view, beginning with the first time-frame.

And in ratios:

As we can see, the beginning state of agreement was around 95% for the AbThreat set (around 97% in the white South) and 85% for three questions in the AbAutonomy set, with the fourth at 77.9%. In ratios, this translates into the 20-1 range for the AbThreat set, and 6-1 for three of the questions in the AbAutonomy set—very high levels of liberal-conservative agreement. Few married couples agree that often on anything:

Things begin to change significantly in the second time-frame:

In ratios:

At this point, just one measure in the AbThreat set remains about 90, although agreement remains higher for all three in the white South. Agreement levels for the AbAutonomy set are now incredibly uniform, as agreement for the three questions that were around 85% fall to the level of the previous outlier, around 77%. Agreement remains higher in the white South.

In the third time-frame, agreement continues to erode, but the pattern changes as well:

And in ratios:

In the AbThreat set, a sharp split appears. While the highest level of agreement (for ABHLTH) drops 3 percent, support for the other two questions in the AbThreat set drops by twice that much. In the white South, they dropped by about 10 points—10.5% for ABDEFECT and 9.4% for ABRAPE. As a result, the level of disagreement in the white South now exceeds that in the rest of the country. In the rest of the country, agreement decreased by 4-5%.

In the AbAutonomy set, agreement plummeted 11-12% in the white South for all four questions, resulting in agreement levels in the mid-to-high 60s (about 2-1). In the rest of the country, polarization grew less than half as fast, from 2.8 to 5.7%, ending up in the 71-72% range for all four questions. For the whole country, agreement fell 5.0 to 7.6%, ending up in the 70-71% range for all four questions.

The changes discussed are summarized in the following table:

We can clearly see the greater increase in polarization in the white South. It holds for all seven questions. However, that was not the case for the transition between the first and second time-frames, when the opposite pattern prevailed for five questions. The white South actually became less polarized on ABANY, while polarization grew less quickly than it did for the rest of the country for the other AbAutonomy questions, and for ABDEFECT. All this was wiped out by the extraordinary jump in polarization in the white South in following transition, from the second to the third time frames, when all five of those questions increased in polarization by double digits.

This pattern of change is reminiscent of the pattern of change in partisan alignments. And, indeed, there appears to be an obvious reason: the explosive growth of conservative Republicans in the white South. However, as we’ve already seen, the interactions between ideology and party ID can be complicated. Which is what we turn to next.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to the previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3 shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4 looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.
Part 5A “The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years” began the 6-part look at abortion.
Part 5B: A big-picture snapshot of abortion attitudes.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5B

2006-08-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

Abortion: The Big Picture

After a long hiatus, I’ve resumed my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. In the second of 6 parts devoted to abortion, I look squarely at the data on agreement and disagreement, which is not the same as consensus, since it includes how much liberals take the conservative position as well the reverse. This is, in effect, a measure of how much polarization there is, not where majorities lie.

Some of the data presented comes from 7 questions that were asked repeatedly over the years. A detailed look at how these numbers have changed over time will be the subject of the next post in this series. But first, a simple “snapshot” post, to get a feel for the conceptual terrain.

Refresher on Agreement and Disagreement

The concept of polarization can readily be quantified for any question we have cross-tabs for. The method is straightforward. Either one of two complementary methods can be used—tabulating the agreement or the disagreement. With spreadsheets, it is trivial to do both. Explaining how and why they work is only a bit more complicated.

So let’s look at an example, and I’ll explain:

We have three conceptually identical examples. I’ll use the last for my example.

Agreement in any row is simply the minimum of the columns being compared. Here we are measuring liberal/conservative agreement and disagreement. (We could do the same with party ID, race, gender, anything we have crosstabs for.) The minimum of 32.6 and 11.8 is 11.8. The minimum of 28.4 and 23.6 is 23.6. And so on. The total agreement is the total of the column of all the agreement figures for all the options.

Disagreement is slightly more complex, for a simple reason: when two people disagree, their disagreement shows up twice: once in the category chosen by the first person, and once in that chosen by the second. For this reason, the sum of the column will have to be divided by two to get the proper figure for total disagreement. Disagreement for each row is the difference between the columns being compared. The difference between 32.6 and 11.8 is 20.8. The difference between 28.4 and 23.6 is 4.8. And so on. And, as already explained, the total disagreement is half the total of the column of all the disagreement figures.

The two total figures, agreement and disagreement, must add up to 100%—give or take rounding errors, which we have in this case: the total is 100.1%. The agreement ratio is the amount of agreement divided by the disagreement.

With that out of the way, we are now ready to put this concept to use.

Abortion: The Big Picture

On the macro scale—across the whole population—abortion views have changed remarkably little over the course of 30 years. However the composition of those views in the population has changed considerably, and this has resulted in increased polarization—but still, far less polarization than is commonly assumed. Furthermore, while there were substantial shifts in abortion views by political identity, there was virtually no shift by church attendance.

The GSS has 18 substantive questions on abortion. Of these 11 were asked once or just a few times in the early 1980s. They provide a snapshot of that time, with agreement levels ranging from the high 90s down to 72.3% nationwide, and 67.2%—just over 2/3rds—in the white South.

In terms of percentage agreement the results are as follows:

In terms of agreement/disagreement ratios, the results are as follows:

None of these figures is indicative of polarization anything like what we see at the Presidential level, which is around 0.4 to 1. That’s a level at which more than two out of three liberals and conservative disagree with on another. The lowest figure on the entire table above is roughly the reverse of that: 2.0 to 1, meaning that two out of three liberals and conservatives agree with one another.

Another seven questions have been asked repeatedly over the years. As mentioned in the previous post, these fall into two distinct groups. The first is a set of three questions dealing with threat situations—rape, threat to the mother’s health, or a strong chance of serious birth defects. The remaining four deal with choices that clearly reflect a woman’s right to autonomy—abortion for any reason, if not married, if married but wants no more children, and if low-income. In the discussion that follows, we will look at these both as groups of related questions, and collectively as separate abortion scales—AbThreat and AbAutonomy.

Considering the entire period as a whole, agreement levels among the AbThreat set of questions are remarkably high—the high 80s and low-to-mid 90s. Interestingly, the highest agreement level comes in the white South—an exception to the overall rule that the white South is otherwise more polarized than the rest of the nation. Agreement among the AbAutonomy set is significantly lower, though still above 75% (3-1), and closer to 80% (4-1) overall. There is surprisingly little variation among all four questions.

In terms of agreement/disagreement ratios, the results are as follows:

This overall view shows remarkably low levels of polarization. Interstingly, the levels of polarization are lower for the white South.

However, as we’ll soon see in Part 5C, (“Abortion: How The Picture Changes Over Time”), this combined data from the 1970s to date masks considerable internal change over the three time periods we’ve used to break down the data (1972-1984, 1985-1993 and 1998-2004).

Still, two things will also become clear: First, even at the most extreme levels that have appeared in recent years, polarization is still far below the levels seen in presidential elections. This is compatible with the recently reported polling data that most people want to some sort of common ground position developed on abortion. Second, the pattern of increasing polarization will not support the claim that liberal Democrats are driving the process.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to all the previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3 shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4 looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.
Part 5A “The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years” began the 6-part look at abortion.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 5A

2006-08-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years.

After a long hiatus, I continue my argument (based primarily on data from the General Social Survey [GSS]) that it’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. In contrast, ordinary conservatives and liberals agree much more often than not. Originally planned as a single post on abortion, it has grown so long that I’m presenting it in 6 sub-parts. Abortion is very important, as it represents the first long-lived social wedge issue supplanting the role of race, which has since slipped into the background. It is only such issue that has robust GSS polling from the early 1970s to date.

With decades of organizing, the anti-choice movement has managed to produce very little net change in the balance of attitudes, which remain closely divided, depending on how questions are asked. It has done a great deal to re-arrange the structure of such attitudes, and the ways they play out in the electoral arena. Polarization has increased since 30 years, but the end result falls far short of the extreme that is commonly supposed.

Backstory Refresher

The original claim that started this all was that liberals are to blame for Ann Coulter’s repeated calls for murder. Their alleged “extremism” around social issues in the early 1980s, it was claimed here, drove moderates and conservatives out of the Democratic Party and into the GOP. As a result, “Coulterization of the GOP is your own doing.”

In contrast, I have argued—using good, old-fashioned reality-based data—that [beginning in Part 1] polarization around social issues is vastly exaggerated, and that [in Part 3] race was the primary impetus for the growth of conservatism in the Republican Party, and exodus from the Democrats. This showed up first in votes for President—as far back as the Dixiecrat candidacy of Strom Thurmond in 181948, and then trickled down the ballot, slowed by the fact that Southern Democrats generally reflected the views of Southern whites, rather than those of the national party. Social wedge issues did play a role, of course—but it was primarily that of covering for race, facilitating, consolidating, rationalizing and moralizing the racially-motivated abandonment of the Democratic Party that centered heavily in the white South.

The primary proof was found in comparing shifts in political identification (from 1972-1984 to 1994-2004) in the white South with the rest of the country. Within the white South, consolidating the figures for liberals, moderates and conservatives within each party, Republicans gained 14.8%, and Democrats lost 14.0%, a dramatic net shift of 28.8%. (One gets slightly different figures using party ID figures directly, due to rounding errors, and people who don’t identify themselves ideologically: Republicans gained 14.1%, Democrats lost 14.7%, for am identical net shift of 285.8%) Outside the white South, by the first measure, Republicans gained just 1.8%, while Democrats lost 4.2%--a much more modest net shift of 6.0%, less than ¼ the shift in the white South. By the second measure, Republicans gained just 1.6%, while Democrats lost 5.3%--a next shift of 6.9%.

This still left the Democrats with a massive advantage outside the white South: 37.7% to 24.5% by the first measure, 37.5% to 24.3% by the second. Inside the white South, however their 42%/23% advantage in 1972-1984 eroded to a 27.9%/37.3% disadvantage, approaching a complete reversal, by the first measure. By the second, the results were nearly identical: a drop from 42.0%/23.2% to 27.3%/37.3%.

The evidence from look at abortion introduces secondary proof---the lack of any sudden, massive increase in social liberalism within the Democratic Party in the early 1980s. Indeed, the Democratic Party membership remained more conservative socially than the Republican Party until the late 1980s. Liberalism on abortion did not increase dramatically within the Democratic Party until the 1990s, as a result of, and reaction to twenty years of anti-abortion activism that centered strongly in the Republican Party.

For quick reference, here are links to all 4 previous parts of this series:

Part 1: Introduction. Overview of argument and data.
Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3] shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4] looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.

The Plan of Part 5

Part 5 in this series consists of 6 parts. Before describing them, I need to quickly explain two different sorts of measure that we’ll be using. First are primary measures of the levels of support for and opposition to abortion rights among different groups. These are important for establishing when and where shifts in support or opposition occurred. Second are levels of agreement and difference in the primary measures between groups. These are important for establishing the degrees of polarization.

After the introductory material, Part 5A looks at primary measures. In the main section (“The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years.”), we see that partisan shifts in opinion did not occur suddenly in the early 1980s, as the conservative narrative claims. Indeed, it was not until after 1987 that Democrats remained reliably more pro-choice than Republicans. We contrast views on abortion with underlying attitudes on race, to emphasize how differently the two dynamics played out, and how clearly race has played a more constant, and leading role. (The abortion measures we use are two scales—AbThreat and AbAutonomy—which are explained below.)

These findings are sufficient to refute the claim that an early 1980s influx of liberals into the Democratic Party was the cause of increased polarization. They clearly show that the impact of race set in well before that time period, and was overwhelmingly focused in the same part of the country. They are perfectly consistent with the vast sweep of historical evidence that race drove the realignment of the parties in the South, not abortion.

The remaining posts go beyond simply refuting the rightwing myth, to developing a more nuanced understanding of how the changes actually took place over time.

Part 5B (“Abortion: The Big Picture”) moves on to looking at agreement and disagreement, starting with refresher to explain how the concept works in terms of a concrete example. After that, we look take a high-level look at the 18 substantive abortion questions asked by GSS. These fall into two distinct categories. First, we look at the 11 questions which were asked once or a few times in the early 80s, but not long enough to establish significant trends. Then we take our first direct look at 7 individual questions that were asked repeatedly from the early-to-mid 1970s to the present. We look at the results for the entire 30+ year timespan taken as a single whole.

These 7 questions fall into two distinct groups. The first is a set of three questions dealing with threat situations—rape, threat to the mother’s health, or a strong chance of serious birth defects. A combined measure of views on these three questions is called the AbThreat scale. It ranges from support for all three to opposition to all three. The remaining four questions deal with choices that clearly reflect a woman’s right to autonomy—abortion for any reason, if not married, if married but wants no more children, and if low-income. A combined measure of these views is called the AbAutonomy scale, ranging from support for all four to opposition to all four.

Part 5C (“Abortion: How The Picture Changes Over Time”) is a detailed look at those 7 questions over time. We examine them both as groups of related questions, and collectively as the two abortion scales—AbThreat and AbAutonomy. We examine them across three time periods (1972-1984, 1985-1993, and 1994-2004) and in two demographic divisions—the white South and the rest of the country.

Part 5D (“Party, Ideology and Abortion”) reintroduces the issue of party, and looks at how party and ideology interact in terms of abortion attitudes.

Part 5E (“Abortion and Church Attendance”) examines the role of church attendance. While regular church attendance is strongly associated with opposition to abortion, there was very little change over the years in the strength of this correlation, except for the AbThreat scale, most notably in the white South.

Finally, Part 5F (“Abortion And Political Narratives”) sums up the findings combines them with some other recent data and relates them to the larger issue of political narratives. It stresses the degree to which those driving polarization from the right represent precisely the sort of out-of-touch, anti-American fringe that they falsely accuse liberals of being. This is deeply significant in itself, but also quite timely, since exactly the same sort of dynamic is playing out in the attempted demonization of Ned Lamont, and the roughly 60% of the American people who agree with him. What this data shows is that Lamont’s candidacy is emblematic of a chronic, enduring condition in American politics, not just the acute crisis that has created the electoral opening.

We now turn to the body of Part 5A.

The Big Picture—Parties, Abortion and Race Over The Years

The lesson here is pretty simple: race has been a fairly constant means to distinguish between the parties since the Civil Rights Era, but abortion has shifted dramatically—not in the early 80s or before, when conservative revisionists would have it, but in the late 80s and early 90s, just around the time that Soviet Union disappeared as a bogey man, and “Operation Rescue” erupted as a magnet for drawing together anti-choice forces.

Let’s start off with looking at abortion, observe the pattern it reveals, and then look at race for a comparison. We’ll use two abortion scales that will be explained more fully below. The first one, AbThreat, combines three questions that involve abortion in threatening circumstances—rape, birth defect, or serious threat to the pregnant woman’s health. The second one, AbAutonomy, combines four questions that are concerned with abortion as function of a woman’s right to make fundamental life-choices, rather than have them made for her. We have two charts presenting these scales on a year-by-basis—one for the white South, the other for the rest of the country.

First, the white South:

The colors follow a simple scheme: red/orange=anti-choice; blue/purple=pro-choice; gray=margin less than 1.0%; darker colors=stronger margins. As they help to highlight, Republican Party members as a whole were more supportive of abortion rights through 1987. The resurgence of Republican support in 1990 (for AbThreat) and 1991 (for AbAutonomy) was probably nothing more than a statistical anomaly—much like the earlier periods of higher Democratic support—since the number of people in these samples is small enough that random fluctuations are to be expected. At any rate, the most it can signal is some lingering transition period. From 1993 on, the margins of Democratic support are overwhelming.

If we look at the rest of the country, the pattern is similar, but with even less ambiguity. The Republican edge in supporting abortion rights ends sharply in 1987, never to reappear:

The conservative narrative that first sparked this series claims that it was extreme social liberalism in Democratic Party in the early 1980s that drove conservatives out of the party, and created the current highly polarized political culture. We’ve already seen—in Part 3 of this series—that no such mass influx of liberals occurred. The above table shows that—in the white South, at least—there was more anti-abortion sentiment among Republicans than among Democrats. If anyone was out of step at this time, it was the anti-abortion forces that flocked to support Ronald Reagan in the GOP primaries in 1976 and 1980. Their views would not become clearly more typical of the Republican Party until the very end of his presidency in 1988.

In contrast, let’s look at a situation where views of party members are in harmony with the party and party activist position. We use a scale created from four different explanations for why blacks have a lower socio-economic status (SES) than whites. Two answers offered internal reasons—essentially blaming blacks for their own condition—lack of intelligence and lack of will. Two answers offered external reasons—discrimination, and lack of educational opportunity. The scale combines all four answers—counting a negative to an internal reason the same as affirming an external reason. Those who give all four external reasons score “1;” three external and one external score “2;” two of each score “3;” one external and three internal score “4;” all four internal score “5.” Table measures the results in two ways: First, by the percentage giving more external reasons than internal ones (scoring “1” or “2”); and, second, by the mean answer given.

From the time of the Carter presidency, in the white South, Democrats are more likely to assign external causes. There were just 4 years when this wasn’t so, and the differences then were less than 1% in one year, and less than 2% in a second. The remaining two years could simply be statistical anomalies. But whatever they are, they are far from constituting a trend:

In the rest of the country—which, of course, includes blacks and other minorities, most of whom are Democrats—the differences are even more pronounced:

I am not arguing that these tables alone prove that racial attitudes are the cause of shifting allegiances. There is plenty of historical data—narrative as well as statistical—to support this view as well, which is precisely the sort of data that’s needed to distinguish between correlation and causality. The tables alone can only support that view, which they do. They show an historical correlation of party and racial attitudes. The historical data shows the causality.

In contrast, the abortion scale tables do not support the view that abortion was the cause of shifting party allegiances. The shifts in allegiance went against the correlations. This is what happens when a previously minority position takes over a party.

We can see another striking example of this drawing on another data source, the American National Election Study [ANES], which began in 1948, and asked about school integration beginning in 1962. [An interface for accessing both GSS and ANES data can be found here.]

This gives us a very good time series to look at how Democratic Party civil rights activism—which really got serious in 1963, with the Civil Rights Act—impacted party attitudes. This longer view goes back 15 years farther than the SES table above, to when Southern Whites in the Democratic Party were more anti-black than Republicans.

The pattern here is clearly the same as that seen with the abortion scales—a party’s position is directly opposed to the majority of its members, which takes some years to come around. In the column tracking the decline of Republican support, we also see the effects of mass defections to the GOP by the more racist elements of the Democratic Party.

Conclusion

The post that triggered this series claimed that liberal extremism drove the process of political polarization, leading to the state where a leading conservative such as Ann Coulter has repeatedly called for murder. Specifically, it was claimed:

It is my understanding that the two parties have been moving further and further apart on several very important fronts. The cultural front encompasses many diverse issues from illegal immigration to God in the public square to what it means to fight a war to gay rights to affirmative action. The economic front includes taxation, social programs, welfare, etc.

In my view the Democrats have been moving in the counter-cultural direction since at least the 1980s. The liberal/progressive wing of the party has grown rapidly and politicians took notice. Conservative democrats either adapted and changed, were tossed out in favor of more liberal candidates, or switched to GOP. Democratic base became dominated by the generation that went to Woodstock. Liberals who control the Democratic Party's current agenda (and comprise somewhere around 25% of US population) differ greatly from the rest of the American public on all the cultural issues I listed above.

Liberals overwhelmingly support homosexual lobby's agenda, affirmative action, and abortion on demand. They are much more secular than the rest of the Democrats and indeed the rest of Americans....

An average American has noticed the ascendancy of the Liberal movement. An average conservative has taken it as a threat to the American way of life....

American conservatives sense real danger to their value system and they do not need Ann's rhetoric to know what is going on. She just provides a sense of validation for their beliefs. We have been polarized long before Ann and Republican spinmeisters came along. Liberals (right or wrong) through their counter-cultural agenda polarized us. The blame is misplaced.

We’ve already seen that this narrative is filled with myths and errors. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party did not grow rapidly in the 1980s, forcing out conservatives. It was the conservative wing of the Republican Party that grew rapidly, and it did so primarily in the white South, where it was the “extremism” of the Civil Rights Movement—and the Democratic Party finally enforcing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments—that drove them into the GOP.

In this post, we’ve seen that conservative and moderate Democrats in the white South were leaving the Democratic Party in the early 1980s for a party whose members were more pro-abortion than the Democrats. This directly contradicts the narrative above. That’s because race—not abortion, gay rights or any other “social issue”—was driving the shift.

These social issues were important, of course—primarily as a means of rationalization. Those who had been on the wrong side of history, opposed to racial justice, needed a way to recapture the stance of moral superiority that they had previously claimed simply by the color of their skin. The “defense of innocent life” was a perfect vehicle for this. What’s more, leaders of the religious right specifically identified abortion as an issue to use to create a mass grassroots movement in direct imitation of the civil rights movement. Of course, many of those attracted to this politics were not racially motivated. But the origins of the movements they joined most definitely were.

Links To Previous Parts

Here again are links to all 4 previous parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2: GSS Spending shows conservative support for the welfare state, and high levels of cross-ideological agreement.
Part 3] shows shifts in party identification consistent with the historical record of race as the primary impetus for white Democrats shifting to the Republican Party.
Part 4] looks at the partisan shifts through the lens of religion.

Was Timing of Arrests Last Week Politically Motivated To The Detriment of Fighting Terrorism?

2006-08-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

Was the very terrorist plot used to blunt Ned Lamont's victory and support attacks against him revealed prematurely, sacrificing real gains in the war on terrorism for partisan political advantage?

That charge was made on Ian Masters' Background Briefing yesterday (audio file not yet available), and received supporting evidence from NBC News today, in a story headlined, "Source: U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests / British wanted to continue surveillance on terror suspects, official says". Masters is a BBC-trained journalist, severely critical of conspiracy theories. NBC does not go anywhere near speculating, much less reporting on political motives, focusing instead on US jumpiness and lack of patience since 9/11. But given the history and SOP of the Bush Administratio, it seems highly probable that once again--as in the outing of Valerie Plame--real security has been cynically sacrificed for short-term partisan political advantage. And, of course, that advantage consists of building a case that blames Bush opponents for not being serious about fighting terrorism.

NBC Reports:

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

British officials knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

The sources did say, however, that police believe one U.K.-based suspect was ready to conduct a "dry run." British authorities had wanted to let him go forward with part of the plan, but the Americans balked.

At the White House, a top aide to President Bush denied the account.

We already know that the rushed operation resulted in some suspects getting away--top operatives according to some reports. But Masters' program raised the spectre that ongoing investigations into other plots may have been undermined as well.

Britain remains on a hightened level of alert and The Independent is reporting that "Bomb plot 'just the tip of the iceberg' of UK al-Qa'ida activity." Jason Bennetto and Nigel Morris write:

MI5 and the police are investigating "dozens and dozens" of possible al-Qa'ida-inspired plots to cause mass murder in Britain, counter-terrorism sources have disclosed.

The alleged plot to destroy up to 10 transatlantic airliners, which police say they foiled last week, was believed to be just one of about 12 similar terrorist plans that are currently being investigated.

Discussing the threat, the Home Secretary, John Reid, defended his decision to leave the nation's terror alert level at "critical", although late last night the Government announced that it had been downgraded to "severe", meaning that the threat of attack was still "highly likely", but not "imminent".

In the US, things have returned to normal. But, as The Independent reports, things are not normal. The level of al Qaeda activity alleged in Britain is dramatically higher than anything seen in the past, and is indicative of intense blowback from the failed neocon politices in the Middle East. The understory of last week's terrorist plot foiling appears to be highly damaging to the Bush Administration, and is only beginning to be glimpsed.

In another story, The Independent reported:

Target Britain: Wave of attacks planned, say investigators
Terrorists in UK still possess huge arsenal of bombs and weapons. Country remains under 'very severe' threat, security sources warn

By Raymond Whitaker, Paul Lashmar, Sophie Goodchild and Severin Carrell
Published: 13 August 2006

Suspected terrorists were planning to unleash a wave of "apocalyptic" attacks on land and air, using an arsenal of bombs and weaponry, including firearms, investigators have discovered.

Police and intelligence sources have indicated that the alleged plot which was thwarted last week was targeted at the UK, as well as at airliners heading for the US, and could have caused devastating loss of life and destruction on the British mainland. One Whitehall source said "many dozens" of plots were under investigation, involving "hundreds" of suspects.

According to one report last night, al-Qa'ida's leader in Britain could have been held in the raids. But security sources estimate that as many as 1,200 people here are actively involved with terrorism, and that the country is still under "very severe" threat from other potential terrorist plots. This, they added, explained why there were no immediate plans to lower the current national threat assessment from "critical", its highest level.

Of course, the level has now been dialed down a notch. More evidence of political meddling?

We already have the evidence of the Downing Street Memos. We know that neither the US nor the UK governments can be trusted at the highest levels. This should not be the basis for wild speculation. But intense scrutiny, and total skepticism toward Bush and Blair's pronouncements are certainly in order. The real story of what happened last week, and why is far from being publicly told.

[UPDATE] A couple of Dkos commentators in a related DKos diary by Phoenix Woman remind us of another precedent--which was also mentioned on the Ian Masters show as well, btw--the premature public outing of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan by Tom Ridge to disrupt positive impetus for Kerry from the DNC:

Hayat, the Pakistani Interior Minister, was furious. He said Khan was the kind of asset that could have led to bin Laden himself, had he not been outed.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 4

2006-08-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is part of a series devoted to refuting the rightwing narrative slandering liberals as an alien force in American politics, not just out of touch with the American mainstream, but downright hostile to it. I began [part 1] by laying out the big-picture argument [links to previous parts at end of diary]:

It’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream, based on data from the General Social Survey.
This data shows that liberals and conservatives have significantly more overlap than disagreement across a range of controversial social issues, as well as national spending priorities.
On the other hand, those wanting to downsize the welfare state represent only a small minority—even among self-described conservatives.

In part 2, I examined the data on spending. Part 3 highlighted the impact of race in driving the growth of conservative Republicans, particularly in the South, as a prelude to examining social wedge issues. This part is a previously unplanned look at the role religion played in that shift. It’s got some surprises. And more numbers than a campaign.

The Story So Far

This part represents an unplanned departure from my script. My first part laid out the big-picture argument. My second looked at spending, and the third looked at the role of race as a social wedge issue in altering the pattern of political identification—both in terms of party and ideology. The historical data from the General Social Survey (GSS) is quite clear, and mirrors the shift of the “Solid South” from solid Democratic to solid Republicans. The percentage of conservative Republicans has doubled in the white South from the 1972-1984 time-frame to the 1994-2004 time-frame: from 11.8% to 23.6%, while moderate Republicans gained 40%, from 7.5% to 10.5%, and liberal Republicans slipped slightly, from 3.7% to 3.2%. At the same time, outside the white South, the gains were far more modest, from 11.0% to 14.7%--and over half that 3.7% gain was offset by losses to moderate and liberal Republicans, totaling 1.9%.

Here, I'm taking a closer look at how religion figured in this process as sociological force. This does less to change the story than it does to add nuance and prevent the story from being hijacked. The complexity of cross-cutting trends is yet another warning against simplistic narratives and talking point explanations.

In the comments to Part 3, johnsonwax said:

I think the key to the numbers above

is realizing that it's not a zero-sum game. Many of those southern conservatives did not exist in the statistics in previous years. The religious right was ignored by both parties until Reagan and the religious right ignored the parties. It's a huge voter base that one party recognized and swallowed up whole. The Dems have largely focused on young voters, but that's not nearly as exclusive a set as the religious right.

This is not really a rightwing narrative, it’s part of the general conventional wisdom. And I deflected it somewhat, but didn’t challenge it in my response, Good Point, But... :

You make a very good point, but it's not the major thing we see going on here. This is not the electorate we are looking at here, but the American people as a whole. So the politicization of fundamentalists and evangelicals--those who were truly apolitical before--would not show up very clearly...

Does this mean that the effect you're talking about was negligiable? No, not at all. I think it was substantial. But I think it was overwhelmed by the shift out of the Democratic Party due to race. I also think that a lot of the impact of the religious right was not just to mobilize the formerly apolitical or marginally political, but to cement the effects of race among the Southern conservatives and moderates who left the Dems over race--and to raise their level of participation. (Remember, in the Democratic Solid South, it didn't even matter if they never voted!)

This analysis is somewhat speculative on my part, since I hadn't examined the data that could confirm it. I'm just reasoning from the data above.

Well, now I’ve looked at it, it looks like I maybe overstated it. Let’s say the impact in increasing voting by fundamentalists was “significant,” but “substantial” may be pushing it. Yes, there was an increase in fundamentalists voting. But the impact of that was entirely secondary compared to shifts in voting patterns—and the vast majority of those were already voting. The most important factors are (1) whether or not we’re talking about white Southerners, (2) the changing voting patterns of theological fundamentalists, moderates and liberals, and (3) how often they go to church.

Prelude: The White South vs. The Rest of Us

I’m not going to present a lot of analysis here. You’ll get more than enough below. I just want to present two sets of charts, showing the relative political power of conservative Republicans in the white South and outside it. First the white South:

Among regular churchgoers, conservative Republicans are the green line, streaking up into the stratosphere, while all the other lines converge into a relatively narrow range, far below. Among all white Southerners, the pattern is similar, though less extreme. Now let’s look at the rest of America:

Among regular churchgoers, conservative Republicans again break out of the pack to a position of clear numerical superiority. But the growth trajectory slows considerably from the second time-frame to the third. Its degree of dominance is considerably smaller. Among the whole non-white-Southern population, conservative Republicans aren’t even the largest group, much less the dominant one. What’s more, their growth hasn’t just slowed since the second time frame—its reversed itself into a decline.

This is what the two Americas look like in terms of religion—the white South, dominated by avidly church-going conservative Republicans, and the rest of us, dominated by no one.

And now, let the slice-and-dice begin.

Church-Goers Vote More Often

First, let’s look at a fairly dramatic chart. It shows how the percentage of voters rises steadily and dramatically with church attendance among Southern whites, in every time period. Indeed, those who never attend church vote less than 50% of time:

The figures are less dramatic outside the white South. One reason we would expect this is that voting is related to how well integrated people are into social and institutional networks that make up what’s commonly called “civil society,” and the South has relatively little of civil society outside of the church, and church-related institutions. The North and the West have many more non-church forms of public participation for people to be civically engaged in. As the following chart shows, those who never go to church outside the white South voted 5.8% above white Southerners for the whole time period. For regular churchgoers—almost weekly or more often—the gap falls to 1.4%, less than a quarter of the gap for non-church-goers.

This also demonstrates yet another way in which Pat Robertson & company are mistaken. Their fear-mongering about secular humanism—which he and others like him often falsely label as a religion—taking over the country is the complete reverse of what the data shows. Not only are their no secular humanist churches, but those who don’t attend them vote significantly less often than regular church-goers do. In fact, the most noticeable increase in voting percentage occurred among white Southern regular churchgoers—Robertson’s core audience. Their voting percentage increased from 71.7% in the first time-frame to 77% in the second time-frame, and 78.1% in the third time-frame. (These gains were offset, however, by declines in churchgoing, as we’ll see below.)

This series was originally inspired in response to the argument that liberal dominance of the Democratic Party with anti-mainstream values (including secularism) was responsible for propelling conservatives out of the party and into the GOP. This is a popular narrative on the right, promoted by a few high-profile figures, such as Ronald Reagan, in the 50s and early 60s. In fact, the opposite was the case.

There was a modest white exodus from the party at this time, primarily due to growing affluence that resulted directly from unionization, the GI Bill, federally-subsidized suburbanization and the like—all products of the Democratic New Deal. People left the Democratic Party because it made them so affluent that they started to feel like Republicans.

The Democratic Party did not “leave” anyone until it firmly embraced civil rights with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And the loss of the Democratic “Solid South” is proof positive that the leaving was all about race. The notion that other, later factors were important—that secular humanists had taken over the Democrats, for example—is all part of the narrative to hide the central role of racism in building the modern conservative movement. The low rates of voting among non-church-goers is yet another piece of hard data that directly contradicts the movement conservative narrative.

Changing Patterns Among Theological Orientations

A comment about the increased participation of fundamentalists was the spark that touched off this diary. But far more important has been the shifting patterns of voting among fundamentalists as well as those with other theological orientations. One look at the flip-flop in fundamentalist party ID should be enough to make that point:

Fundamentalists went from 55.3% Dem/31.8% Rep to 32.8% Dem/51.1% Rep. This 41.8%+ swing was clearly far more important than any increase in the number of fundamentalist voters. After all, as long as Democrats got more of those voters, additional voters helped them. It was not the additional voters, but who they were voting for that mattered.

Moderates and liberals also roughly flip-flopped, but with less extreme results: 31.1% among theological moderates, and 17.2% among theological liberals, who started off as the most pro-Republican, and ended up as the most pro-Democratic.

Outside the white South—due, in part to black Protestants—the picture is significantly different. There have been shifts, to be sure, but no flips. In fact, among theological liberals, the shift was towards the Democrats. The Democrats remain a majority among all three theological orientations:

The biggest shift was amongst fundamentalists—20.5% toward the Republicans, just under half of their gain in the white South. But the GOP would need another comparable shift, just to draw even in this group. The shift amongst theological moderates was 12.5%, and again, the GOP would need another shift of this magnitude to draw even. Among theological liberals, Democrats gained 7.6%, and the balance there is almost identical to what it is amongst fundamentalists.

But most tellingly, perhaps, the GOP lost ground among all three orientations between the second and third time frames. Indeed, Democrats had even lost ground amongst theological liberals between the first and second time frames—7.5% to be precise. But they came roaring back to gain just more than twice that in the next time frame, to end up with a net 7.6% gain. This same picture will show up however we slice the data: Democrats lost ground everywhere from 1972-1984 to 1985-1993, but then came back outside the white South, with varying strength across a wide range of different groups.

Churchgoing in Decline

As the following table shows, regular church attendance is in decline, while the number of non-churchgoers grows:

The decline is actually sharper in the white South: In absolute percentage (the percentage of the population in each category, not the percent change) regular attendance is down 5.5%, compared to 4.7% in the rest of country. Frequent attendance is also down 1.0%, compared to a 0.9% increase in the rest of the country. The pattern was reversed with rare churchgoing: up 1.5% in the white South, down 1.0% in the rest of America. The percentage of non-churchgoers rose 4.9% in the white South and 4.7% outside it.

The story in terms of percent change (not shown) sounds even more dramatic: In the white South, regular attendance is down 14.0%, compared to 13.4% in the rest of country. Frequent attendance is also down 6.0%, compared to a 5.8% increase in the rest of the country. Rare churchgoing: up 4.5% in the white South, down 2.8% in the rest of America. Non-churchgoing rose 45.0% in the white South and 34.0% outside it.

These declines are only part of a larger picture, however. A July 20, 2004 press release from NORC (which conducts the GSS), “America’s Protestant Majority is Fading NORC Research Shows” stated:

The increasing secularization of American society has taken a particular toll on Protestant identity, presenting the prospect that after more than 200 years of history, the United States may soon no longer be a majority Protestant country, according to a new study by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

The percentage of the population that is Protestant has been falling and will likely fall below 50 percent by mid-decade and may be there already, the research reported.

From 1972 until 1993 the Protestant share of the population remained stable. But then a decline set in. In 1993, 63 percent of Americans were Protestant, but by 2002, the number was 52 percent, NORC research found. During the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion went up from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent....

The survey shows a continual erosion on many measures for Protestants in the past generation, while the proportion of people who say they are Catholic has remained fairly steady at about 25 percent of the population. People who said they belonged to other religions, including Eastern faiths and Islam, Orthodox Christians, interdenominational Christians, and native-American faiths increased from 3 percent to 7.

Because of this sharp decline from 1993 onward, the figures from the third timeframe surely understate the declines in churchgoing as of today.

These declines took their toll in the voting booth as well:

Regular churchgoers declined as a percentage of the electorate, both in the white South (45.6% to 40.3%) and in the rest of the country (40.1%to 34.9%). As noted above, there was an increase in voting among regular churchgoers in the white South, but this was more than offset by the decline in their numbers, relative to the population as a whole. What we have seen within that overall decline is a net shift from regular mainline church attendance to regular fundamentalist and evangelical churches. The racist shift I wrote about last time is facilitated by that shift. It’s not that these churches were openly racist—a handful were, but the vast majority were not. Rather, they were simply unconcerned with the social justice dimension of the Gospels—a dimension that figured prominently among mainline denominations. Typically, when they do profess concern, they express it in terms of charity, not justice.

It was, after all, the mainline churches that formed the strongest institutional support for the civil rights movement in the white community, second only to the more progressive unions, most notably the UAW under Walter Ruether. Both the churches and the unions, however, had significant resistance amongst their memberships. And both lost significant membership during the periods covered by these surveys, although for different reasons. Nonetheless, the end result is a decline in social and political infrastructure supporting racial equality, and egalitarianism in general.

Compensating for these declines is a vital need for progressive politics, one that is commonly ignored. The reason is simple: it has low immediate payoff. But the long-term benefits are enormous, as correlation between church-going and voting suggests.

Church Attendance Vs. Orientation

There are two different trends in voting. First, as noted above, church attendance correlates with increased voting. Second, the more liberal one’s theological orientation (fundamentalist, moderate, liberal), the more likely one is to vote. There’s one more trend that matters here: The more conservatives one’s theological orientation, the more likely one is to attend church more often. This last, church-attendance trend works against the second voting trend. The way the two interact can be seen in the following table:

(This table comes with a major caveat: in 1984, the GSS refined the way it coded denominations—which in turn refined the assignment of respondents’ theological orientation. The survey has never attempted to ask about orientation directly, instead relying on that of the denomination named. So even the post 1984 data has some unknown amount of assignment error. That’s one reason I’m not going to devote my most intensive analysis to this data. The conclusions I will draw are based on broad patterns that we can be confident of because they show up so consistently. I’m staying away from fine distinctions were the assignment errors might play a significant role. Just to be on the safe side, I discussed this briefly on Friday with Tom W. Smith, Director of NORC's General Social Survey. There is reason to believe that voting participation data is relatively comparable pre-and post-1984.)

At every attendance level during every time frame, theological liberals voted at higher rates than fundamentalists, from an astonishing high 22.1% to a low of 8.4%. This shows the higher rates of voting amongst theological liberals at similar levels of church attendance. The total difference is shown in the unweighted average for each time frame. It takes no account of the attendance differences. But the higher rates of church attendance amongst fundamentalists offsets this considerably. The result is shown on the last (“total”) line in each time frame, where the liberal-fundamentalist difference is consistently smaller than the unweighted average, by roughly around seven or eight percent.

Although the comparisons to the first time frame are inexact, because of the recoding GSS did in 1984 to capture more specific information on denominations, we can see that (1) the trend is clearly toward reducing the gap in voting rates, but (2) a gap still remains. It’s the attendance gap and the growth of fundamentalism more generally that are more significant, however. If theological liberals attended church as often as their fundamentalist brethren, and voted accordingly, the voting gap from 1994 to 2004 would have been more three times what it was—10.7% rather than 3.1%. Among other things, Al Gore would have unambiguously won the Presidential election in 2000.

Church Attendance And Political Identity: Parties First

With all the above in mind, let us turn to less ambiguous data for our refined analysis. This involves church attendance and political identity. Following the earlier data, showing that the white South has lead the shift toward conservative Republicanism, we examine the white South first. We begin by looking at party ID and church attendance. Below we’ll break that down further into liberals, moderates and conservatives within each party ID.

This table above reveals a very interesting pattern. In the first time frame, Democratic dominance was still in place, at least as far as party ID was concerned. Democratic identification hovered around 40% for all four categories of church attendance. Republicans and independents split the remainder, which was almost 50/50 among regular church-goers, with Republicans losing strength fairly evenly to fall 10.2% among non-churchgoers, where they trail independents by a 5-2 margin.

In the second time frame, Democratic support had dropped over 12 points, but was even more consistent, hovering around 28% of the vote. Meanwhile, the Republican skew toward regular churchgoers had more than doubled: Republicans took 46.4% of regular church-goers compared to just 24.2% of those who never attend—a 22.2% gap.

We find a surprisingly similar pattern to begin with in the rest of the country, with a much more modest pattern of change:

Again, we start out with the Democrats taking roughly 40% across the board, with slightly more variance than in the South. Republicans and independents split the remainder with the same pattern seen in the South. They start off even closer to 50/50 among regular church-goers, and the Republicans again drop almost 10 percent (9.8% to be precise) and trail independents by a little over 5-2.

Outside the white South, the changes follow a similar pattern—a broad Democratic decline matched with Republican gains centered on regular church-goers—but the magnitudes are so much smaller that end result looks entirely different.

The Democrats drop only about three points overall, dropping most among regular church-goers, least among frequent church-goers, and roughly the same three point drop among the rest. As a result, they outnumber Republicans at every level of church attendance—something they only did for non-church-goers in the South. They outnumber Republicans among regular church-goers by 6.3%, compared to being outnumbered in the South by almost three times as much—18.6%. In addition, they hold a massive 20.2% margin among frequent church-goers.

The reason for this is clear: The Republicans picked up 4.1% among regular church-goers, but could only manage one other increase larger than 1%--a pickup of 2.5% among rare church-goers. In fact, they actually lost ground in every category since the 1985-1993 time frame—from a 2.3% decline in frequent church-goers to a 5.1% decline in rare church-goers. If these had been increases on top the pervious ones, the story would have been quite different. As it is, this is not the picture of a growing majority party. It is the picture of a declining national party, buoyed by a still-growing regional base.

With that in mind, we turn to the combined national picture:

The only group that the Republicans lead among are the most regular voters—but only by 1.2%. In contrast, they trail in two other categories by double digits, and in a third by over 8%. They are in much better shape than they were in 1972-1984, but they are going backwards in three categories, and are virtually stalled in their strong suit—regular church-goers. Again, this is not the picture of a growing national party. It’s the picture of one that has peaked. Of course, this is no guarantee of Democratic success. It merely indicates that Democrats have a real opening. Their fate is in their own hands.

Church Attendance And Political Identity: Party-Ideology Groups

The fate of the parties is the big picture. But the theme of this series is ideological as well as partisan. And so we turn to the finer-mesh picture we get from examining church attendance and political identity—defined as the combination of ideology and party ID:

In raw percentages, the biggest gains were by conservative Republicans among regular attendees (18.6%) and frequent attendees (12.4%). However, the next figure is a bit of a surprise: Conservative Republicans gain more (8.7%) among non-attendees than among rare attendees (7.8%). There are now more white conservative Republicans who don’t go to church in the South (14.6% of all non-church-goers) than there are liberal Democrats (13.1%). Still, this remains the only group in which conservative Republicans aren’t the most numerous group. They’re only #2, behind moderate independents (19.2%). The gain among non-church-goers reflects the fact that racial politics cuts across all the white South.

The only other group to gain ground among all four groups is the moderate Republicans, though in two cases their modest gains come after giving back a lot of gains they earned in the second time frame. Among regular church-goers, they gained 3.6% from the first to the second time frame, only to drop 2.2% back to 9.8%. At the other extreme, among non-church-goers, they jumped from 6.5% up to 7.3%, only to tumble back down to 6.6%. It’s only among the rare attendees (up 5.8% to 12.4%) and frequent attendees (up 3.2% to 12.1%) that moderate Republicans gained ground twice in a row, and significantly improved their standing.

The only other group to gain ground more times than it lost was liberal Democrats, on the other extreme. They gained 1% each among non-churchgoers (up to 13.1%) and frequent churchgoers (up to 9.2%). They broke even on rare churchgoers and lost ground among regular churchgoers (down 3.2% to 6.4%).

In between these two extremes were two sets of three groups with similar patterns. One set—moderate and conservative Democrats and liberal independents—lost ground in all four groups. They were the biggest overall losers. Collectively, they lost 17.2% among non-churchgoers, 14.6% among rare churchgoers and frequent churchgoers, and 14.1% among regular churchgoers. The other set—moderate and conservative independents and liberal Republicans—lost ground twice. One—the moderate independents—gained ground twice, while the other two gained ground once and broke even once. Collectively, they pretty much broke even. They gained 7% among non-churchgoers and 1% among rare churchgoers. They lost 3.1% among frequent churchgoers and 2.8% among regular churchgoers.

In the rest of the country, things looked very different, as the following table shows:

Among regular churchgoers, conservative Republicans made large gains—up from 14.1% to 22%, in first place by more than 6%. But that gain of 7.9% came at the expense of a 3.8% loss among liberal and conservative Republicans. In every other category liberal democrats took a larger share—as did moderate Democrats. They came in fourth among frequent churchgoers, fifth among rare churchgoers, and sixth among non-churchgoers.

In short, what we’re seeing is pretty much the same thing we saw from a slightly different angle before: the growth of conservative Republicans among regular churchgoers is both more modest than in the South, and lacks broader resonance. Indeed, almost half the growth comes at the expense of less conservative Republicans.

When we look at America as a whole, the white South pattern is submerged, and resulting pattern looks more like the pattern seen among minorities and non-Southern whites:

Conservative Republicans post strong gains among regular churchgoers, but partly at the expense of other Republicans. Although they make gains among all other attendance groups, they do not dominate any of them, coming in second among frequent churchgoers, third among rare churchgoers and sixth among non-churchgoers. Other Republicans fare worse: Moderate Republicans lose ground among frequent churchgoers as well as regulars, while liberal Republicans lose ground in all four attendance groups.

In all groups except regular churchgoers, liberal Democrats made modest gains, and liberal plus moderate Democrats combined outnumbered conservative and moderate Republicans combined.

A Broader View

All the above data are consistent with my original thesis—that the driving force behind political polarization is racial politics. It has taken a long time to set in at the level of political self-identification, thus cementing Republican power in the white South. But it was evident long before in presidential voting, as noted in the previous installment. Liberal activism around social issues—such as women’s rights and gay rights—were natural outgrowths of the civil rights movement. Likewise, conservative opposition to them was an outgrowth of opposition to the civil rights movement, and the GOP’s use of them as wedge issues to split the Democratic base has become a defining characteristic of American politics over the past 30-40 years.

The conservative narrative blames liberals for creating the current climate of polarization. It denies its racists roots, as well as its own pro-active role in fomenting resentment and social divisions. Instead of race, it points to issue like abortion and gay marriage. Yet, as I’m about to demonstrate in my next installments, the issue-by-issue attitudes on wedge issues are nowhere near as polarized as our political narratives suggest. The 72% gap between liberals and conservatives in the 2004 presidential vote cannot be found in any issue area, even for the most contentious of specific questions. To understand this systemic polarization, we have to look beyond issues to framing narratives, and beyond the narratives to the larger political system that generates them, and the social system of which it is part.

That will come at the end of the series. For now, we can simply conclude that religion reflects a divided America. The white South is increasingly dominated by church-going conservative Republicans. The rest of the country remains far more balanced in its views. It remains a place for dialogue—if we stand up for it.

Reactionary movement conservatives have been trying to convince us that the South is a model for all America, and lectures from the pulpit are the prototype for all political speech. But the data we’ve looked at shows that’s just not true. The successes of Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas and Brian Schweitzer in Montana are not flukes. They reflect the fact that slaveholders were defeated in Bloody Kansas in the 1850s, and never got anywhere near Montana.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 3

2006-07-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

In Part 2, I looked in detail at the spending issues, which are the bedrock core of New Deal liberalism, and the foundation—still—of American liberalism. Liberals believe in a just society, “liberty and justice for all,” not just for the wealthy few who can afford it. With the advent of the industrial revolution, the vision of a just society has been intimately linked to the welfare state everywhere from Germany to Japan, and America is no exception. This includes breaking down traditional, feudal barriers, expanding opportunity, enhancing individual autonomy, and redressing the imbalances that unfortunately are a part of any rapidly industrializing society. In most countries, conservatives have long accepted this—even promoted their own version of the welfare state to reinforce the traditional social hierarchies they defend. This is true in America as well—at least among the vast majority of conservative citizens. But ultra-conservative elites and movement activists never accepted it. As explained in the previous installment of this series, they are the odd man out.

The key to their power today is thought to reside in divisive wedge issues, used to polarize the electorate. But that’s not really true. As we’ll see in the next installment, while the public is less consistently liberal on these issues, there is still much more liberal/conservative agreement than disagreement. The power of wedge issues is not in the issues themselves, but in how they are framed within a larger, long-term political strategy, and the narratives it generates.

To understand them historically, we need to turn to the mother of all wedge issues: civil rights. Historically, the GOP broke the New Deal coalition by appealing to Southern racism in the wake of Democrats embracing civil rights. The result was the eventually transformation of the Democratic “Solid South” of the New deal era into the Republican Solid South of Regan/Bush/Bush era, during which Democrats won just 9 states in three elections over 7 cycles from 1980 to 2004: Carter won his home state in 1980, and Bill Clinton won his home state of Arkansas plus three others in both 1992 and 1996. Here we examine what that shift meant in terms partisan shifts and polarization.

Racism, And The Rise of the Republican/Conservative South

As already noted, the GOP broke the New Deal coalition by appealing to Southern racism in the wake of Democrats embracing civil rights. The first major indication of this potential was Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrat” run for President in the 1948 election, winning 4 Southern states, in response to the Democratic Party adopting a strong civil rights platform at their convention. It resumed in the 1960 election, again prompted by the Democrat’s civil rights platform, with 2 states electing slates of unpledged electors who voted for Harry Byrd, and in the 1964 election, when Republican Barry Goldwater carried 5 Southern states after voting against the Civil Rights Act, and finally, with the third party bid of George Wallace in the 1968 election, winning 5 states.

Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was based on the realization of two things: First, that racism split the Democratic base—taking the vast majority of the white South and an indeterminate share of the North. Second, that racial progress was inevitable. The task, therefore, was to create a permanent split out of resistance that would inevitably fail, and create a new majority out of it. The key would be to play on people’s racist resentments, and build an entire politics on it, while still not losing the traditional Republican base, a good share of which still retained the party’s Lincolnian roots. He would have to largely give in on substantive issues, while “winning” (even if he lost) on symbolic ones, such as the Supreme Court nominations of segregationist judges Carswell and Haynsworth. The trick worked.

Over time, other social wedge issues emerged—abortion, immigration, gay rights. Their significance (and actual attitudes underlying how they play out) cannot be understood apart from this history. Which is why this diary precedes a closer look at the polling data on them. This historical review sets the stage for a look at the polling data—data which clearly shows that liberals did not drive conservatives out of the Democratic Party, as Ender alleges (see below).

Beginning in the 1970s, two things happened:

First, as the racial issue was lost in its initial form—ending formal segregation—a secondary line of defense emerged, largely preventing integration. White flight and anti-busing activism on the local level spread the battle to the north in the 1970s, while affirmative action—which Nixon himself promoted in his “Philadelphia Plan,” aimed squarely at the construction trade unions—was re-branded as “reverse racism,” so that whites could maintain their racial privilege, while shifting the approbrium of “racism” onto its victims, and those “liberals” who support them.
Second, additional wedge issues—abortion, immigration and later gay rights—appeared in the place of race, stoking the fires of resentment. As with re-branding affirmative action as “reverse racism,” these issues were framed to be moral crusades in which conservatives could imagine themselves as moral crusaders, submerging the unpleasant historical reality that they had actually bitterly opposed equality for blacks and other minorities, as well as for women—and, indeed, continued to do so, although in less blatant ways.

In both these developments, the narrative framework of conservative virtue is paramount. If we are good and they are bad, then they deserve worse treatment. They could be treated well, too, if only they would be like us.

The Rightwing Counter-Narrative

Against the historical facts, the right has a counter-narrative: today’s culture wars and political polarization are due to liberals—but not because they supported racial justice. (Indeed, conservatives try to pretend that they have a wonderful record on civil rights—a worthy topic for another day.) According to this narrative, it wasn’t the GOP that aggressively went after white racist sentiment in the South, it was liberal Democrats who pushed conservatives out of their party with their extremist views on abortion, gay rights, etc.

This is essentially what Ender alleged back on June 13, in his comment in ”Coulterization of the Republican Party”:

I'd like to illustrate why it is a lot easier to "polarize" voters these days and why Ann Coulter has such an audience.

It is my understanding that the two parties have been moving further and further apart on several very important fronts. The cultural front encompasses many diverse issues from illegal immigration to God in the public square to what it means to fight a war to gay rights to affirmative action. The economic front includes taxation, social programs, welfare, etc.

In my view the Democrats have been moving in the counter-cultural direction since at least the 1980s. The liberal/progressive wing of the party has grown rapidly and politicians took notice. Conservative democrats either adapted and changed, were tossed out in favor of more liberal candidates, or switched to GOP. Democratic base became dominated by the generation that went to Woodstock. Liberals who control the Democratic Party's current agenda (and comprise somewhere around 25% of US population) differ greatly from the rest of the American public on all the cultural issues I listed above.

Liberals overwhelmingly support homosexual lobby's agenda, affirmative action, and abortion on demand. They are much more secular than the rest of the Democrats and indeed the rest of Americans. They are distrustful of the American Military establishment. In short they are well represented by the denizens of Daily Kos.

An average American has noticed the ascendancy of the Liberal movement. An average conservative has taken it as a threat to the American way of life.

Notice the reference to “the generation that went to Woodstock.” Of course, a generation didn’t go to Woodstock. Less than half a million people did. Unless, of course, he means the movie. (More went to Star Wars. Why not blame it?)

But invoking Woodstock echoes the dominant rightwing trope that identifies liberalism with the 60s counter-culture, which had little to do with electoral, legislative and judicial political, rather than with the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement, and the consumer protection movement—all powerful forces in American political life that fundamentally challenged and changed the power relations under which we all live.

This is the sort of fundamentally dishonest historical framing that right routinely engages in. It’s similar to their attempts to turn the Founding Fathers—whose leading members were Deists and Enlightenment rationalists—into a bunch of fundamentalists out to establish a religious state. The big lie works wonders, and it’s so much more efficient than a whole bunch of little ones, who are hard to keep straight without a big one watching over them.

What The Numbers Say

But enough fun with words. Let’s have some fun with numbers. Let’s put Ender’s claims to the test. According to him, liberals flooded into the Democratic Party, and drove the conservatives out. Well, not exactly. Instead, what we find is exactly what I said: The GOP sucked in Southern conservatives like a tornado sucks up houses.

To see what happened, I’ve taken several GSS variables, and grouped them together to get large enough samples so we can have confidence in the results, as well as few enough categories so we can see what’s going on. (The variables exist in a public space, and expire over time as new variables are created. But by saving the definitions, they can be recreated at any time.) First is YearSpan, which groups all the years of the GSS into three groups: 1972-1984, 1985-1994 and 1995-2004. Second is Polideo, which combines party id (Dem, Rep or Ind) and ideology (lib, con or mod) to produce 9 separate groups. Third is WhiteSouth, which puts white Southerners into one group and everyone else into another.

Political Identity: The Nationwide Picture From 1970s to Present—The Liberal Bogeyman Dispelled

We begin with a table showing the nationwide distribution of political identification in the three time-frames.

While Ender said “The liberal/progressive wing of the party has grown rapidly and politicians took notice,” we see only a modest increase, from 13.5% to 14.5%, followed by a decline back to 13.8%. That’s hardly the rapid growth that Ender fantasizes. The decrease in conservative Democrats is larger than this: from 10.8% to 9.1% and then to 7.4%. In other words, while the number of liberal Democrats increased by 1% of the national total, the number of conservative Democrats dropped by 1.7%. For every three new liberal Democrats who showed up, five conservative Democrats left.

If the number of liberal Democrats had doubled, say, or even increased by 50%, then this sort of mass exodus of conservatives in even greater numbers could make sense in terms of the scenario Ender envisions. But the modest increase that actually occurred seems highly unlikely to create a stampede effect. What’s more, the exodus continues at the same pace—another 1.7% drop—even as the number of liberal Dems declines again—by 0.8%. Furthermore, the increase in conservative Republicans is much more dramatic than the drop in conservative Democrats: from 11.2% to 15.8% and then to 17.1% These increases—5.9% total—really do constitute rapid growth, a 53% increase, and GOP politicians defintely took notice.

The simplest explanation is that Ender suffers from red-blue colorblindness.

The point can be made even more powerfully by looking at the same underlying data from a different perspective—in terms of percentages within the parties, and among independents.

From this viewpoint, the percentage of liberals would go up if conservatives left the party, even if no new liberals showed up at all. So the percentage gain is exaggerated from this perspective. And yet, even at the end of the process, liberal Democrats only constitute just under 40% of the party, a gain of just under 7%. In contrast, the percentage of conservatives in the Republican party started at nearly 50% (49.1%) and climbed 12% (74% more than the 6.9% liberal Democrats increased), to end up at 61.1%. Conservative Democrats have no idea what it’s like to be so thoroughly overshadowed as liberal Republicans must feel.

We can dramatize this by removing moderates from the equation, and looking at the percentage breakdowns that remain:

Amongst Democrats, the conservatives start off at a 5-4 disadvantage, and decline to a final disadvantage just a bit better than 2-1. But amongst Republicans, liberals start off at a 3-1 disadvantage, and end up at almost a 6-1 disadvantage. At the rate things are going, it will take another 20-32 years for conservatives in the Democratic Party to be as small a minority as liberals were in the Republican Party 22 to 34 years ago.

So much for the claim that liberals drove conservatives out of the Democratic Party. So much for blaming liberals for Ann Coulter.

Political Identity: The White South In Perspective From 1970s to Present—What Really Happened

But what about the contrasting thesis—that the growth of conservatism is due to coded racist appeals begun by Richard Nixon, and broadened to include other resentment-based anti-egalitarian appeals?

For that, we need to compare the shifts among white Southerners—who were the primary target of the Southern Strategy—to the rest of the nation. Note that we’re not saying that they were the only targets. Clearly they were not. (After all, George Wallace won the 1968 Democratic Primary in Michigan.) But they were disproportionately the targets. So let’s see what happened.

First, the white South:

The shift is dramatic. Within the white South, the percentage of conservative Republicans doubled from 11.8% to 23.6%. Meanwhile, the percentage of all Democratic groups declined, with the smallest decline among liberals. Clearly, within the South, liberals were not driving anything. It was Southern whites responding to what Democrats outside the South—and Black Democrats inside the South—were doing. And that means the delayed, but quite deliberate shift of loyalties due to the Civil Rights movement. As long as Democratic officeholders remained in place in the South, the shift in party identification was retarded, even though presidential voting had shifted. But as more and more of those officeholders retired—or in some cases changed parties themselves—the shifts in political identification followed.

Am I saying that all these Southern conservative Republicans are racists? No, of course not—especially not in the classical sense. But there are newer forms of racism that allow for complete disavowal of racist attitudes, and yet still manage to keep real-world power almost exclusively in white hands. And that is what we see happening here. Remaining within the Democratic Party would mean sharing power with blacks. And a sizeable chunk of Southern conservatives are simply not willing to do that, even though they will gladly cheer on a black running back on their favorite team—or even (if their name’s not Rush Limbaugh) a quarterback.

Looking at things in terms of within-party percentages, a few things come into sharper focus.

We see that conservative Democrats started off outnumbering liberal Democrats, and even though this relationship is reversed, liberals still remain barely over 1/3 of the party—hardly a dominant number. Except, of course, for the presence of black Democrats. Which is really what this is all about in the first place. On the Republican side, conservatives move from being a slight majority to almost a 2/3 majority. The begin by outnumbering liberals 3-1 and end up by outnumbering them 7½-1. The picture that emerges is of one party (the GOP) that’s highly polarized, dominated by its conservative wing, while the other party (the Democrats) is well-balanced between liberals, moderates and conservatives.

Outside the white South, the shifts are all more modest.

Again, the largest shift is an increase in conservative Republicans. But just over half that gain (1.9%) can be attributed to a shift from moderate and liberal Republicans. The Republican’s net gain is just 1.8% over a period of two decades plus—hardly a stampede to join the party. In fact, there was a stampede between the first two periods, when party membership increased 6.1%, from 22.7% to 28.8%. But then it dropped almost as dramatically, back down to 24.5%. The Democrats loss is more substantial (4.2%), but they actually gained a relative share of the electorate from the second to the third period (from 57.8%-42,2% to 60.6%-39.4%), as Republican losses outstriped theirs.

In contrast to the white South, the picture for the rest of the country is of a Democratic Party that’s lost some ground, and is a bit unsure of itself—in contrast to the heavily conservative Republican Party, but that still holds a sizeable edge in overall size.

Again, the within-party percentages allow us pick out a few more instructive points.

The percentage of liberal Democrats has increased from 35.1% to 40.6%, with most of the loss coming from conservative Democrats, dropping from 24.1% to 19.1%. The liberal’s 7-5 edge has increased to 2-1, but moderates are just slightly fewer in number. On the Republican side, conservatives move from being just under a majority to 60%. The begin by outnumbering liberals 3-1 and end up by outnumbering them 5½-1. While the parties are closer to mirroring each other than they are in the white South, conservatives clearly dominate the GOP, while liberals hold a bare plurality among the Democrats. Only one party is clearly polarized, and it is the Republicans.

This, then is the background for examining the wedge issues we’ll consider in the next part. Polarization has come not from liberal Democrats driving conservatives out of their party, except for one thing—their support for the Civil Rights movement, coupled with the GOP’s deliberate courting of Southern (and other) whites, using coded racist narratives.

A Closing Note

Before closing this diary, a few word should be said about lordzorgon’s attempted response to the previous installment. (I’ll be including a much more comprehensive response at the end of this series, addressing the full range of objections raised.) The most telling thing he says is:

I *know* the majority of the public disagrees with me on the size of government. I don't need a poll to prove that.

Precisely. But the polls make it clear that a majority of conservatives also disagrees. Which is why he was mistaken when he wrote:

conservatives are *not* running the show right now. Only faux conservatives who passed tax cuts but don't have the cojones to back them up with spending cuts.

Sorry, lordzorgon. But those are real reactionaries, acting like real conservatives, because in the end they don’t have a choice.

As noted, I’ll post a more detailed response at the end of this series. While no poll is perfect, the large mass of data in the GSS allows us to overcome legitimate objections. However, most of lordzorgon’s complaints don’t even qualify as that.

For now, one point suffices: the welter of objections that lordzorgon tosses out serve primarily as distractions from what’s really at issue: are liberals far out of touch with the American mainstream, or are reactionaries like Ender and lordzorgon out of touch with even the majority of conservatives? The truth could be somewhere in between, of course. But those are the terms of debate. And the objections lordzorgon tosses out are mostly irrelevent. They’re like tossing sand in the umpire’s eyes to prevent him from seeing the play he’s supposed to call. We’ll answer those objections at the end of this series. But in the meantime, don’t let yourselves be distracted by them. Don’t take your eye off the ball.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 2

2006-07-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 of this series I laid out the big picture argument:

(1) It’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream, based on data from the General Social Survey.

(2) This data shows that liberals and conservatives have significantly more overlap than disagreement across a range of controversial social issues, as well as national spending priorities.

(3) On the other hand, those wanting to downsize the welfare state represent only a small minority—even among self-described conservatives.

In this diary, I’m going to take a closer look at the national spending data. What we'll find is incredibly robust support for big government--despite how people may react to that term. Demonization can only take you so far. Indeed, we find that the welfare state is more popular than bare bones of the night watchman state that conservative ideology endorses.

The General Social Surevey began in 1972. Questions about national spending were part of it from 1974 on, beginning with a set of 11 questions, all set in the same format:

"We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether you think we're spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right amount. Are we spending too much money, too little money, or about the right amount on..."

Another 15 questions were added in 1984, along with 15 questions asked that year only. Two more were added in 2000 and 2002. In addition another set of questions was asked with a slightly different format in 1985, 1990 and 1996. We'll examine the responses to these four sets of questions separately, so we can see how much stability and how much variation there is.

The GSS Main Spending Sequence

Here's the main sequence of questions:

As can be seen, liberals and conservatives have the least disagreement over functions of the night watchman state (7.9%), followed closely by the welfare state periphery (9.7%). There is almost twice as much difference over the welfare state core (15.6%) as there is over the night wathcman state. Still, that's not very much disagreement--less than 1 out of 6.

Interestingly, however, there is slightly more support for the welfare state core than there is for the night watchman state. There are two ways we measure this: (1) the combined total of those saying we're spending "too little" or "about right." This is the combined total of those who don't want to cut spending--a reasonable definition of support. Using this measure, support for the welfare state core is 83.7% compared to 70.2% for the night watchman state. (2) The "liberalism index" cuts out the middle--it's the percentage of those saying "too little" or "too much" who say that we're spending "too little." (Normally, the liberalism index is reversed for military spending, because long-term data shows an inverse relationship between support for military and domestic spending. But for our purposes, we want to focus on what kinds of spending get what kinds of support, so we're treating all items the same, for our purposes here.) Using this measure, support for the welfare state core is 75.2% compared to 53.2% for the night watchman state.

There is a relatively small number of items in our sample, so it wouldn't be wise to make too much of this comparison--yet. Still, it's a significant warning that those think the welfare state unpopular, and controversial compared to "basic government functions" cannot just assume they are right. The evidence here is that they are wrong. Not only is the welfare state popular with everyone--not just liberals--it is more popular than the night watchman state, at least from the data we have here.

As we’ll see, however, this same pattern recurs again and again, in every sequence we will look at. This consistency considerably strengthens our conclusion.

Furthermore, the welfare state periphery is even more popular. While it's not the traditional welfare state that we in America identify with the New Deal, it certainly encompasses the sorts of programs that are traditionally identified with liberals. Its high popularity is another blow against the notion that liberals are an alien force in the American body politic.

The GSS Main Spending Sequence--Version Y

Now lets look at the second long-term sequence of data:

Here again, we see the same big picture pattern. When it comes to liberal/conservative difference, the differences between the three categories have shrunk a bit, 9.9% for the night watchman state compared to 16.4% for the welfare state core, with the welfare state periphery at 14.0%. But the difference in support levels has increased: 72.6% to 38.5% in terms of liberalism index, and 83.1% to 60.1% in terms of those not wanting to cut spending. (Again, the welfare state periphery is more popular by both measures: 87.3% and 91.1% respectively.)

It's tempting to blame this difference on foreign aid, and to claim that this is really a liberal item, part of the welfare state periphery, if not the welfare state core. However, most foreign aid is directly or closely tied to American business or military interests. Although the American people vastly over-estimate how much is spent on foreign aid as well, the perception of it as wasting money on people overseas is equally significant. However, there is no guarantee it would be more popular if peole came to see it as a boondogle for American business. Most convincingly, however, we can simly remove the item, and look at how the night watchman state would fare without it. The answer is: better, but essentially the same. Liberal/conservative disagreement would rise from 9.9 to 11.1, while the welfare state core would still best it comfortably: 72.6% to 49.0% in terms of liberalism index, and 83.1% to 71.5% in terms of those not wanting to cut spending.

The GSS Main Spending Sequence--Version Z

Now let's look at the 1984 "Z" sequence:

The three categories have grown closer in terms of the liberal/conservative difference: 7.9% for the night watchman state and 9.7% for the welfare state periphery--both identical to the figures for the main sequence. But the difference for the welfare state core has dropped to just 12.0%--less than one in eight. What's more, we again find that the welfare state core is much more popular than the night watchman state: 85.9% to 50.7% in terms of liberalism index, and 91.3% to 69.1% in terms of those not wanting to cut spending. The welfare state periphery again scores highest of all, with 87.1% and 93.4%, respectively.

And again, removing foreign aid from the night watchman state does not change the big picture: The difference between liberals and conservatives creeps up to 8.5%, while the welfare state core is still much more popular than the night watchman state: 85.9% to 62.3% in terms of liberalism index, and 91.3% to 79.6% in terms of those not wanting to cut spending.

Where Question Wording Does Make A Big Difference

Before looking at our fourth series, it's time to take up the two examples where wording makes a significant difference:

First, changing the wording from "assistance to big cities" to "solving the problems of the big cities" more that doubles the number of those saying we're giving too little, from 24.0% to 51.9%, and more than halves the number of those opposed, from 34.8% to 16.6%. In both versions, however, those who think we're spending too much are a small minority electorally.

Second, the effects are much stronger when it comes to helping the poor. If the word "welfare" is used, more than half the people, 50.4%, say that we're spending too much--a unique example of majority oppsition to domestic spending. Just 19.1% say we're spending "too little." But if "assistance to the poor" is used instead, the figures completely reverse: 65.1% say we're spending "too little," and just 11.0% say we're spending "too much." (Version Z, used "caring for the poor" for the one year it was asked, and got 69.4% saying we're spending "too little," just 7.8% saying we're spending "too much.")

These examples--especially the second one--open a window into a whole other realm of investigation, one that will only partially be explored in the current series. The demonizatin of "welfare" by ultra-conservatives has had an incredibly pernicious effect on our body politic, as well as on the poor themselves. But it seems to have had little impact on people's thinking about "assistance to the poor," which is, for the most part, really just another way of saying "welfare."

GSS Alternative Spending Sequence

We're now ready to look at the last GSS spending sequence, one in which people are allowed to opt for large cuts or increases, for a total of 5 choices rather than the 3 used in the questions above. This is a smaller sequence, and perhaps because of that, there's a break in the pattern, as seen in the chart:

This time, the welfare state core has the least disagreement between liberals and conservatives: 12.5% compated to 14.9% for the night watchman state and 19.9% for the welfare state periphery, which is also the least popular of the three--a dramatic shift from the other results. But one thing stays the same: The welfare state core is much more popular than the night watchman state:

81.5% to 60.3% in terms of liberalism index, and 89.2% to 76.3% in terms of those not wanting to cut spending. The welfare state periphery again falls to third, with 59.6% and 72.3%, respectively.

General Spending Questions

The last category we look at is general spending questions. A word of warning--one of them is about defense spending. However, it was framed as a part of a set of questions about spending in general, so we’re going to keep it here. What’s more, there aren't a lot of questions in this category.

From the chart, we can see that “Defspdr” is a bit of an outlier, but not as much as “CutGovt.” The reason for this comes from the context in which CutGovt was asked. It was asked as one of several options for government action to spur the economy. The question asked was as follows:

758. Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. [There was also a neutral option.]

A. Control of wages by legislation. [SetWage]
B. Control of prices by legislation. [SetPrice]
C. Cuts in government spending. [CutGovt]
D. Government financing of projects to create new jobs. [MakeJobs]
E. Less government regulation of business. [LessReg]
F. Support for industry to develop new products and technology. [HlpHiTec]
G. Supporting declining industries to protect jobs. [SaveJobs]
H. Reducing the work week to create more jobs. [CutHours]

CutGovt was the most popular option: 81.5% favored, of which 40.2% favored it strongly. But it wasn’t alone. Nor was it without contradiction.

Of these, D (MakeJobs), F. (HlpHiTec) and G. (SaveJobs) involve the government spending more money. Yet, they, too, received hefty majorities as well: MakeJobs was favored by 71%, 26.2% “strongly.” HlpHiTec was fovered by 75.4%, 25.1% “strongly.” SaveJobs was favored by 50.1%, 14.8% “strongly.”

More precisely, 58.5% favored both CutGovt and MakeJobs, 15.2% favored both “strongly.” 62.8% favored both CutGovt and HlpHiTec, 14.3% favored both “strongly.” 41.3% favored both CutGovt and SaveJobs, 8.9% favored both “strongly.” It’s as if they were voting to go on a diet to lose 20 pounds, and to eat more ice cream at the same time. It could be done, of course. The hard part is figuring out how. In any event, it’s clear that the answer to this question is not a true measure of people’s overall policy preferences.

What’s really interesting is a comparison between CutGovt and MakeJobs. CutGovt represents conservative orthodoxy. Calls for cutting spending to help the economy have been heard thousands upon thousands of times over the past thirty years. There is some logic to it—too much borrowing can crowd out money for private investment. But there’s logic against it, too. Or more precisely, experience: when FDR cut spending in 1938, still under the sway of balanced budget orthodoxy, he temporarily killed off the recovery from the Great Depression. It was only after this experience that his administration fully embraced the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. On the other hand, “government financing of projects to create new jobs,” (MakeJobs) was what Roosevelt did to employ millions of people during the Great Depression, but it’s something that politicians rarely talk about nowadays. Yet, support for it was almost as high as for the budget-cutting alternative.

Spending Category Support Compared

We are now ready to present a grand overview. If we combine all the questions from the earlier spending series together, and sort them into the three categories we've used before, and treat general spending as a fourth category, this what we get:

The pattern we've seen before in most of the separate question sequences shows up again: (1) liberal/conservative differences increase from the night watchman state (9.2%) to the welfare state periphery (12.1%) to the welfare state core (14.2) (1) But differences are always relatively small compared to agreement that averages 7-to-1 over disagreement in last instance. (3) The welfare state core is much more popular than the night watchman state, both in terms of liberalism index (78.7% to 53.8%) and increased or stable spending (86.8% to 68.2%); while (4) the welfare state periphery bests it slightly (81.6% and 88.9% respectively).

In contrast, the general spending questions show the highest rate of liberal/conservative disagreement--19.0%. The disagrement is still less than 1 in 5, but it's more than double the disagreement over the night watchman state. In addition, support for general spending is lower than any of the other three categories by a significant amount (58.5% to 68.2%) by one measure (more or stable spending) and is slightly above last place (52.8% to 49.9%) by another (liberalism index).

In short the greatest division in opinion and the greatest opposition come when we ask the most general kinds of questions. When we ask specific questions, opposition generally declines (20-30%) substantially while division increases modestly (3-5%). The difference between the welfare state periphery and the welfare state core is relatively small compared to the difference between both of them and the night watchman state. All this makes perfect sense in terms of a citizenry that is broadly supportive of the welfare state in particular, and broad public spending for the public good more generally. This citizenry includes conservatives and moderates as well as liberals. If it did not, (1) the overall support for the welfare state core and periphery could not approach the 90-% level and (2) the liberal/conservative difference would rise sharply moving from the night watchman state to the welfare state, rather than rising just a modest 3-5%.

Final Thoughts

Finally, we return to two items touched on briefly in passing—foreign aid and welfare. These items are notable for how anomalous they are. Their support scores in both measures diverge markedly from most other spending items. Indeed, their support levels are lower than the average for general spending category. Within that category, the single item they most resemble is CutGovt.

They clearly appear to be items about which the public lacks context. First, the designated recipients are clearly “other”—not the sorts of people the average American citizen thinks of as “us.” Relatedly, they are socially remote. Most people don’t know very much first hand about people on welfare or in countries receiving foreign aid. Furthermore, they have no idea how much money is being spent. Although it is rarely asked, whenever the public has been asked, they have grossly over-estimated the amount of money spent on both these items—so much so that they believe these items (which account for roughtly 1% of the budget each) constitute 20% of the budget or more, enough to make the reasoning about them bleed into thinking about spending in general, as opposed to spending on specific items for a specific purpose.

This is where the ultra-conservatives get their traction. By demonizing remote and powerless others, and demonizing liberals for caring about them, ultra-conservatives have created a narrative framework for talking about politics that is far removed from reality, but closely connected to people’s ignorance, fear and prejudice. They can’t get much mileage out of it in attacking the welfare state directly, because conservative support for the welfare state is far too solid for that. But these two outliers provide insight into how ultra-conservatives can and have created a narrative that is far more potent when expressed in other areas—even though it fails to produce the high levels of polarization that many assume to exist. We will take a look at those areas in our next installment.

Oh, one last thing. Here’s another chart of GSS main spending sequence. Just one difference. It’s limited to self-identified conservatives. The only items that a majority of them want to cut are welfare and foreign aid:

In lordzorgon's front page diary, "Republicans or conservatives?" at Swords Crossed, he wrote:

If you dislike what is going on in our social or foreign policy, I think it is fair to blame "conservatives", because conservatives are mostly running the show in those areas. But to carry this over to economic policy, sorry -- conservatives are *not* running the show right now. Only faux conservatives who passed tax cuts but don't have the cojones to back them up with spending cuts.

But, as the above chart clearly and conclusively proves, conservatives do not want to cut spending. It's not for lack of cojones, as the political discourse of sexual insecurity would have it. It's because conservatives don't want it. And while the folks in Congress are more reactionary than conservative, they can only go so far before running afoul of their base.

Yes, Virginia, Conservatives Are Running America...Into The Ground

2006-07-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how conservatives, the great preachers about "personal responsibility" are never actually personally responsible for anything.

Neither Nixon, nor his protege, McCarthy, were responsible for their own downfalls, for example. It was their "enemies" who did them in--though how exactly Nixon's enemies made him cheat on his taxes has never really been fully explained.

And when Ronald Reagan was caught red-handed trading arms for hostages with Iran to fund the conta terrorists in Nicaragua, what did he say? "Mistakes were made." Passive voice. "Mistakes were made."

And when half the House leadership that was hounding Bill Clinton over the Lewinski affair turned out to have affairs of their own, what did we hear? Nothing but a quick reversal, in which those doing the investigating were suddenly the bad guys. Salon magazine was vilified. And Larry Flint? Puh-leaze!

But mighty as these men might have been, they were only dodging responsibility on an individual basis. Now, however, the conservative movement is in trouble, "big time," as America's #2 war criminal would say.

And so it's only natural to find the entire conservative movement doing a "Who, me?" routine.

They've been doing it for some time. But now we have an example at Swords Crossed, lordzorgon's front page diary, "Republicans or conservatives?", which is actually (a) relatively sophisticated, compared to what we get from, say, Ender, with a breakdown into 4 different kinds of conservative and a look at all three branches of government and (b) relatively balanced and honest, concluding:

If you dislike what is going on in our social or foreign policy, I think it is fair to blame "conservatives", because conservatives are mostly running the show in those areas. But to carry this over to economic policy, sorry -- conservatives are *not* running the show right now. Only faux conservatives who passed tax cuts but don't have the cojones to back them up with spending cuts.

Quite frankly, if anyone is going to try to peddle this line, I don't think your going to find a substantially better job than lordzorgon has done.

Things Fall Apart

But once you start poking around a bit, it's surprising how quickly and easily the whole things starts falling apart.

First, consider this passage:

- For Congress, we had a brief *conservative* (as opposed to just Republican) majority 1995-98. Another brief one circa 1947. If you're feeling very generous, maybe a brief one 1981-82, when Democrats let Reagan get most of what he asked for. And finally, we can go back to the pre-Depression era, when there was a solid working conservative majority in the 1920s.

What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong? Simple: According to movement conservatives, evil liberals are to blame for all that's wrong with America. They are an alien force, out of touch with real Americans, whose true nature is conservative. So--uh--how come Americans almost never trust conservatives to run Congress? And how come America became and remained the world's dominant superpower over a long period in which conservatives barely held Congressional power for the blink of an eye?

Don't get me wrong. We can quibble a bit over the dates, but lordzorgon's basically right: "conservatives" as he defines them have played virtually no role in making America great from the platform of Congress.

Where he's wrong is in taking them off the hook for the rapid tumble America's taken since they came to power in 1994, helping to squander one of the greatest opportunities a world superpower has ever had to shape its own future, and create a better world for all the people in it.

Who's A Conservative?

According to lordzorgon, conservatives (not just Republicans) controlled Congress from 1995-1998, but he never explains why the cut-off date. Also according to lordzorgon, Bush is neither a fiscal nor an economic conservative, defined as follows:

A "fiscal conservative" believes the government should run a balanced budget, shouldn't run up debt, and should solve (one way or another) its long-term entitlement obligations such as Social Security and Medicare.

An "economic conservative" believes in small government (not just tax cuts but also spending cuts), devolution of many federal government functions to the states, and less reliance on government and more on private industry to solve day-to-day problems.

OTOH, lordzorgon says:

Reagan was definitely a conservative.

Hunh? As The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, Bush's deficit this year is projected at 2.3% of GDP. His total from 2002-2006 is 2.7%. The Reagan/Bush total, 1982-1993 was much higher: 4.3%. If Bush Jr. isn't a "fiscal conservative," then no way is Reagan one.

And the same goes for "economic conservative." Reagan cut taxes, but not spending. That's where his record deficits came from.

Nor, for that matter, was Reagan all that much of a social conservative. He knew how to talk to them, that's for sure. But he wasn't a church-going man, he had lots of gay friends (he was a Hollywood actor, remember?), he opposed the Briggs Initiative in California in 1978 that would have made it illegal for gays to be public school teachers.

You see where this is going? If your standard is complete ideological purity, then Reagan was no conservative. And if Ronald Reagan wasn't a conservative, then who the hell was?

Underlying Problems

In fact, there are a number of different underlying problems with lordzorgon's argument:

(1) He doesn't establish any standards, so the judgements are arbitrary. While some are uncontroversial, others are not, and still others are plainly wrong.

(2) Partly as a result of #1, he mixes up conservatives and reactionaries--which is commonplace, to be sure, but still it's wrong. It's simply false to claim (as he implicitly does) that Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor weren't conservative. He's using Scalia and Thomas as his benchmarks, but they aren't conservatives, they're reactionaries, as their willingness to overturn precedent indicates.

(3) Ultimately, where lordzorgon is headed is the argument that "conservatism hasn't failed, it's never been tried." Regarding economic policy, he says "conservatives are *not* running the show right now. Only faux conservatives who passed tax cuts but don't have the cojones to back them up with spending cuts."

This echoes the claim of communist apologists, "communism hasn't failed, it's never been tried." And, in a sense--a better sense than lordzorgon has managed--they were right. To take two biggies: (a) Marx wrote of the "withering away of the state," that surely wasn't what Stalin or Mao produced. (b) Marx said it would appear in the most advanced industrial nations, instead it showed up in backwards ones, dependent on foreign capital.

But you know what? Even though they were right in one sense, they were wrong in another: communism had failed, precisely because it proved impossible to try. The preconditions could not be met in the real world. And the same thing applies to conservatism. Because, just for starter, the vast majority of self-identified conservatives want more spending on the major welfare state items in the federal budget.

It's. Just. That. Simple.

(4) As stated in the beginning, the real purpose here is simply to avoid personal responsibility. Reactionaries have been selling themselves under the "conservative" brand name for over three decades now, and they do that by demonizing liberals, blaming everything imaginable on them. And payback's a bitch.

They've been able to get away for it in part because they've never had to govern. At best, they've semi-governed, bargaining roll-backs here and there. Gaining momentum, but not full control until after 9/11. Until then, the very long-term success of liberalism had protected them. As they kept on dismantling and destroying liberal policies and programs that kept America thriving and growing, there was still a good deal of backup, redundancy, and new opportunity in the system. So it took a long time for the incremental damage of their rollbacks to show up in major ways.

But from 9/11 onward--especially after they took over the Senate in November 2002--the breaks were off. And it's taken a remarkably short period of time for people to recoil in horror at what they've seen of conservatism's results when the rubber hits the road.

"Who's there?" / "Not me!" is just not going to cut it, no matter how hard folks like lordzorgon try.

The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted—Part 1.

2006-07-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

It’s not liberals, but ultra-conservative movement conservatives who are far outside America’s mainstream. And I’ve got the figures to prove it. In fact, liberals and regular conservatives agree far more than they disagree. The ultra-conservatives are odd-man out, and their constant demonization of liberals is a highly effective form of distraction that’s absolutely crucial to the success of their project, which has virtually no mainstream support. This argument is consistent with, but goes far beyond, recent criticisms of neo-conservatives, including John Dean’s just-published book, Conservatives Without Conscience.

With Israel’s airstrike killing 4 UN observers, we once again see evidence of the right wing’s glee over the death of those it hates, for whatever reason, or for no reason at all. (After all, what do they know of these four people who died?)

Glenn Greenwald notes:

Here's another item to discuss in the next newspaper article about the "Angry Left": members of the Little Green Footballs community last night celebrate the death by Israeli bombing of four UN peacekeepers:

5- I would not put it against the Israelites, nor hold it against them, to have targeted this position based on the revelation, yesterday, that Indian UN 'peacekeepers' were complicent in the kidnapping/murder of Israelites, earlier.

20 - Too bad Kofi wasn't there, too.

22 - So what is Koffi going to do about it even if they did? I understand the paper cuts from a strongly worded letter can really hurt if desert sand gets in them. We are all at war with the UN, time to admit it.

37- I'm finding it hard to feel bad for these so-called peacekeepers. Most of them blindly shilled for Hezbollah while attacking Israel....

38 - ....
63 - ....
70 -....

That was just from the first 100 comments (more here). Consider the mindest required to celebrate the death of U.N. peacekeepers. It's time for another news article on the Angry Left.

This reminded me again of a discussion at Swords Crossed in which Ender defended Ann Coulter, explaining that “Coulterization of the GOP is your own doing” because out-of-the-mainstream liberals drove the conservatives out of the Democratic Party. This polarization, Ender explains, is what gives Coulter her audience. Hence, liberals are to blame for her.

There are, of course, more holes in this logic than you’ll find in Swiss cheese. Such as, “If it’s just a result of polarization, why doesn’t Al Franken make those sorts of jokes?”

After all, Franken’s made his living in comedy all his life. He knows what’s funny. What is he, chopped liver? Still, no jokes about killing conservatives.

[Note: I use Ender as an example, because I encountered him directly, and because Swords Crossed is relatively rare (arguably unique) website, set up to try to promote a left-right debate. However, as it has evolved, it appears that conservatives will only participate under something approaching Fox News rules—they get to spread group lies about liberals on a regular basis, while the liberals go around pretending it’s still the Age of Enlightenment. The dysfunctional debate at Swords Crossed is thus a good mini-barometer of how the larger political debate in our country is seriously off-kilter. I am continuing to post diaries there, but will not engage in debate there. I do not wish to appear to support the gross inequities of how the site functions to tacitly endorse the Fox News rules of engagement. Therefore, I do not engage there. I gladly engage here.]

My initial response to Ender demolished his sweeping claims with a few specific examples of recent polls to the contrary. But I promised a more sweeping survey of public opinion data—a promise I didn’t fulfill, since Ender piped up and promised to research and write a diary refuting me. I decided to wait for his response before doing my diary, but of course he never delivered.

So now I’m delivering on my promise. We’ve just seen another outburst of hate on the right—as Glenn documents. But unlike Ender, I don’t just blindly extrapolate, and conclude that all conservatives are just knuckle-dragging yahoos. Quite the opposite. I think that LGF—and the rightwingers at Swords Crossed, too—are highly un-representative of conservatives as a whole. In fact, liberals and conservatives have far more overlap in their views than have differences. Extremists in the conservative movement have hoodwinked the majority of conservatives, in large part by poisoning them with demonized images of liberalism. The result is a dramatic 72% difference in who liberals and conservative voted for in the 2004 election. But if we look at the issue level, we find that differences rarely come anywhere close to even half that much. Rather, agreement of 70%, even 80% or more is the rule.

Agreement and Difference Explained

First, let me explain what these terms mean. If there are two positions, liberal and conservative, and all liberals support the liberal position, while all conservatives support the conservative position, then there is a 100% difference between them. But if both liberals and conservatives support both positions equally, there is 0% difference. It doesn’t matter how much support there is for each position. All that matters is that the same percentage of liberals and conservatives support each position.

Expanding a bit, we don’t have to limit ourselves to two positions. We can ask people to respond on a sliding scale, and compare the distribution of answers in the same way: If there are 5 categories, and liberals and conservatives respond in the same percentages across the board, then the difference between them will be 0%. If none of the conservatives and liberals respond with a common answer, then the difference will be 100%.

Now, the image that Ender projects—the image that Coulter projects, and that movement conservatives of all stripes project, is that liberals and conservatives have virtually nothing in common. And it’s not just movement conservatives who believe this. It’s the conventional wisdom. It’s all that talk about “Red States/Blue States.”

It’s malarky.

On issue after issue, and question after question, if we break people down into liberal and conservative, there is more agreement than disagreement, and usually by an overwhelming amount. There are liberals who hold the conservative position, and conservatives who hold the liberal position. And if there are more than two options, there are both liberals and conservatives who will hold those positions as well. Combine these numbers together, and they will virtually always come up to more than 50%--usually a lot, lot more—70%, 80% or more as a rule.

Most public opinion polls do not systematically include information about people’s ideology. You have to hunt around and find the ones that do. And if you do that, people can fairly question if maybe you’re being selective in the polls you include, and those you don’t. So, to avoid any such questions, I’m just going to look at one source of data. It’s the most analyzed data set in US social science after the US Census, the General Social Survey, conducted by the non-profit National Opinion Research Center, which is affiliated with University of Chicago. The GSS has been conducted 25 times since 1972, with the 26th coming out later this year.

I’m not going to try to analyze the whole thing. I am going to look at every substantive question in 4 different parts of it, however. The first has to do with government spending—which is the heart of what New Deal liberalism was about. The others have to do with divisive so-called “wedge issues”—abortion, gay rights, affirmative action.

New Deal Consensus vs. Reactionary Fringe

I have chosen this combination of areas for a very deliberate reason. Undermining and reversing the New Deal is job one for movement conservatives. They have never accepted the New Deal as legitimate, and want to undo it completely, if possible. In this they are a fringe minority, and the data will convincingly prove it. In their quest to overthrow the New Deal, movement conservatives have resorted to using social wedge issues, to divide the Democratic Party base, and put conservatives in power—conservatives who dare not enact their most heartfelt agenda of abolishing the New Deal, but who can, nonetheless, roll it back incrementally.

On social issues, the liberal majority is not nearly so overwhelming and universal. Depending on how issues are framed, majorities may shift from one side to the other. But despite this fact, the differences between liberals and conservatives remain well below 50%--which means that there’s a lot more common ground, and a lot more room for reaching understanding than the polarizers would have you believe.

Why does this matter? Simple: if liberals and conservatives can work out compromise solutions on social issues (such as parental controls like the v-chip, instead of draconian government censorship), then the overwhelming liberal consensus on economic issues will prevail. Thus, polarization is a strategy for rightwing extremist to set the agenda for the entire country, and to stymie effective governance by the majority.

The demonization of liberals we see routinely here at Swords Crossed is but a tiny little echo of the overall rightwing noise machine, but it fits in perfectly with this grand plan—a plan that most people have no idea about. After all, even the vast majority of the extreme right true believers buy their own line—just like Ender does—and think that they represent the vast majority of the American people.

The Big-Picture Data

Here, then, are the broad results of the GSS survey questions in the areas I looked at—plus a snapshot supporting my claims about (a) widespread support for New Deal-style government spending and (b) the marginal nature of reactionary opposition. I will examine all this data in more detail in the diaries to come. But these broad results clearly demonstrate the truth of the claims I’ve just made. I stop here because (1) I don’t want everyone to go into overwhelm, and (2) I want the discussion here to deal with the fundamental arguments presented, as opposed to any discussion of detailed analysis which will come with the followup posts.

Liberal-Conservative Agreement

Of 59 items dealing with issues of national spending, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 12.8 percent. Only 7 items-less than one in eight-had a disagreement of over 20%. None had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 18 items dealing with substantive questions about abortion, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 15.9 percent. Although 8 items had a disagreement of over 20%, none had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 13 items dealing with affirmative action, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 14.6 percent. Just 2 items had a disagreement of over 20%, and none had a disagreement of over 30%.
Of 9 items dealing with gays and lesbians, the average disagreement between liberals and conservatives was 19.3 percent. While 5 items had a disagreement of over 20%, just one had a disagreement of over 30%. Even so, the disagreement—31.9%—was less than half the agreement—68.1%