If you need any evidence that our media is falling down on the job of actually reporting on the issues and the facts instead of trotting out stereotypes and Republican-spun narratives as if they were fact, then I give you this thought: How can it be, in this day and age, that anyone can repeat the idea that Republicans are for “small government” in the face of panty-sniffing policies, spying on Americans, invading other countries for the hell of it, depleting the rights of prisoners of war and the accused at home, and the war on drugs?* On top of that, they support a version of unchecked capitalism that lets big business into your drawers and investigating your bloodstream and telling you what kind of hobbies and political leanings and home life you can have to even hold a job. Anyone who says that of the party would-be fascists call their home should be greeted with glares and dropped jaws at the blatantly Orwellian language, but instead the “small government” line is still, to this day, being treated as a piece of common wisdom, as Avedon notes in her beautiful rant on this.
Conservatives have always supported intrusive government, they have always endangered Americans by aggravating other countries, and they have always been very happy to collect taxes from ordinary working people and use that tax money to fatten the Malefactors of Great Wealth while depriving the rest of us of our freedoms. Those same people conned a number of libertarian-minded young people in the ’70s and ’80s into believing that conservatism was liberalism and vice-versa because a few intolerant lefties went overboard in their objections to morally reprehensible expressions of racism and sexism. I would have thought these kids would have grown up by now and realized that they’re still paying taxes but under the Republicans they’re getting less for them - and that’s before the bill for all that “strong defense” comes due.
She’s referring to this video where Barney Frank smacked down some idiot who retreated to the “small government” nonsense in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Republicans support a vice cop heavy America, which is hardly “small government”.
Republicans who continue to trot out the tired “Nanny State” line are playing a little language game—it sounds like the authority is the problem, but it’s more that the authority has to be feminized that is the problem. Daddy With A Belt State is just fine. It’s only if the government gets out of the discipline and exploitation and into actual caring and sharing roles that suddenly they freak out. Girl cooties and all that. Did you know if your neighbor gets health insurance, vaginas will grow directly on your face? Did you know that episode of “South Park” is a big part of the reason that conservatives were eager to claim it as theirs?
What I really love about Avedon’s rant, though, is her swipe at the “I wanted to be a liberal, but” conversion stories. It’s hard to overstate the popularity of these stories. As Avedon says, often the small fraction of the left that does admittedly exist of PC bullies who seek to be offended is cited as a reason that our intrepid hero had to run into the arms of the GOP.
Which I never got. If you’re easily offended by a bunch of cranks to the point where you’d abandon right-minded thinking just to distance yourself from them, why on earth would you then run to the side of political spectrum where cranks run the show directly instead of nip at your heels? I mean, we’re at a point where major presidential candidates are hinting around that they’d be happy to restrict contraception to satisfy the cranks. If your priority is crank-avoidance, then the Republican party is simply not the place for you.
I have a better theory, which is that the “I’m a liberal, but” Ann Althouses of the world usually mean, “I’m a liberal, but found that conservative think tanks pay well and/or you can get published more often if you reposition conservative views as would-be liberal views.” For the people who make money at this. For everyone else, I suspect they just say they used to liberal because they know it’s sexier to have strayed and returned to the fold than to have been a lifelong authority-worshipping square.
*Yes, I’m aware a lot of Democrats fall in line on a lot of these things, but no one is describing them in glowingly anti-authoritarian terms like “small government”.
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Not only do they support tapping your phone, going through your panty drawer, and checking out your medical records, they’ll dog your blog too, as one waitress found out when she described Seattle Republican Stefan Sharkansy’s son’s bratty behavior at her resturant. Her life was threatened, she was fired from her waitressing job, and “the Shark” threatened to get her fired from her Amazon job too unless she wrote a groveling apology online. Since she’s a single mother, she had no choice but to submit to a slavish mea culpa that makes her sound more like a lowly serf who’s offended the king, rahter than a citizen with the right to criticize others, even if they do work for the government.
Now, try imagining the outrage if a Democrat or a Green pol went overboard like that, and how Faux and talk radio would be outraged-outraged! Do you hear?-over such royalist behavior.
Scary, no?
If your priority is crank-avoidance, then the Republican party is simply not the place for you.
Unless you’re really a crank at heart and just like to pretend otherwise, which is the case for most of these people, I suspect.
I said something about the small government nonsense in an earlier post, Amanda. Almost sheer coincidence.
The neocons are all about more government, more government, more government. That is more government in our bedrooms, more government intrusion into women’s lives, and more government involved in our conversations. The Republicans have never once supported less government. Not once. The Republicans are the Taliban party of the United States, simple as that.
I saw the image at the top of this post, and thought “Hark! A post touching on economic idealogues! Is that “A Tool”? Is it “A Shaft”? … But no… Neither, Amanda has done us one better and found a picture of an honest-to God “Crank”.
I’m hoping that the crank in my 79 Ford will look all shiny and smooth like that one above when I drop the bearings from it this winter, but that’s another story.
The whine that ultra pc cranks are ruining the liberal side simply reflects the fact that there are a huge number of people who would rather comfort their bigotry than overcome it, period.
It takes a certain amount of crankiness to get most people active in politics anyway. They gotta get riled about something. Unfortunately, oppression and its father bigotry and prejudice, don’t work well with democratic principles, so I’d say an engine with that kind of crank won’t run for long anyway. At least not with a democratic setup.
Possibly facist, but that’s a whole nuther vehicle and I heard once you get behind the wheel of one of those, you’ll find there’s no brakes, until you’ve careened over the cliff.
In a similar vein, I imagine they say it because they’re trying to say “I still want to get high, enjoy sex, and dance all night to rock music.” Basically the same idea as calling yourself a Libertarian, so you can retain some deniability about signing on with the GOP’s most egregious policies.“Crankshaft” would be a great name for a blog. Or a recurring feature on a blog. Just sayin’.
Jovan - the neocons aren’t really pro-big government, just pro-war. That’s really their thing - they are all about macho strutting on the world stage, building the national identity by killing foreigners. The important convergence is between neocons, theocons, and big money. The first two are just the useful idiots of the latter. Big money finds war convenient (it is, after all, good for business - not just selling weapons, but also “opening new markets”). That makes the neocons natural allies. The theocons distract people from the fact that they are getting royally screwed by encouraging them to focus on people who are gleefully screwing, which diverts power away from the natural allies of the working class (i.e. progressives). In the end of the day, the Iraq war is really about tax cuts, and the “culture of life” is about bankruptcy reform.
“In a similar vein, I imagine they say it because they’re trying to say “I still want to get high, enjoy sex, and dance all night to rock music.” Basically the same idea as calling yourself a Libertarian, so you can retain some deniability about signing on with the GOP’s most egregious policies.”
Based on what we’ve all seen, those are all perfectly consistent with being Republican, LOL.
I looooooooove that clip! Thanks, I forgot about that. Barney Frank is such an inspiration. Minimal BS.
Conservatives absolutely do believe in small government insofar as the discussion is confined to creation of tax and other economic policies designed to support low-income and many middle-class families. We all know their hard-earned dollar is sacred and that no one can justify its taxation when any portion of the revenue goes to a black single mother on her 3rd kid, or to a job training program for people over 60, or to disaster relief for a catastrophe-prone area of the country, right? And even worse is policy that doesn’t tax them but forms some restriction on market forces being able to exploit anyone at any time, because, of course, this is a meritocracy.
But they do love their big government when they need a Christian moral authoritarian to assert its power legally to control every aspect of a person’s sex life.
They find it offensive that we force them to tolerate behaviors they find repugnant. They find it offensive that we force them to contribute toward the financial maintenance of a middle-class in this society that keeps *real* class warfare from breaking out. They find it offensive that we would dare remind them that throughout our country’s history our government and population have supported the overthrow of democratically elected leaders, segregation, genocide of native populations and the intentional crushing of foreign economies to create room for corporate control of sovereign nations’ economies.
I hate conservatives.
OT: why are the ads in the sidebar of PANDAGON, of all places, so incredibly…. frat-errific????
I’m referring to the John Q. TV ads. Currently on my display there’s one featuring Paris H. in a bathings suit, and another (yes, 2!) featuring an anonymous bootie in garter belt and hose.
I’m all for pix of great bootie, but on Pandagon? Seems totally out of place.
Muzak has different ‘channels’: don’t the ad-placers have something similar, and something that would more suit the philosophy of Pandagon?
But they do love their big government when they need a Christian moral authoritarian to assert its power legally to control every aspect of a person’s sex life.
Let’s be fair. They also love big government when they run their money machines into the ditch and start to reap the consequences of their actions. They love the big taxpayer bailout.
As Avedon says, often the small fraction of the left that does admittedly exist of PC bullies who seek to be offended is cited as a reason that our intrepid hero had to run into the arms of the GOP.
Who are these people? What does that even mean? I’m not talking about the straw liberals that exist in the minds of folks who think, as someone at roy edroso’s place concerning John Derbyshire, “racism is dead but multiculturalism is destroying Western soceity”. I’m talking about these aparently real people who somehow or another bully racists, sexists, homophobes and other assorted jackasses into, I guess, quivering silence.
Are we talking about folks who, where they discussing something mundane like interpersonal relationships at their jobs rather than race relationships, would be colloquially refered to as “drama queens”? I knew a girl in college who was convinced I was basically the same as the local Grand Dragon because I dug Hank Williams Jr. and Clarence Carter. Yeah, I never could figure it out either, but is that the same sort of “PC bully” you’re talking about? I know conservatives have difficulty with the whole reality thing, but can’t the rest of us admit folks like that really don’t factor in much. If someone’s gonna be a fool, they’re gonna be a fool whether they get help or not. Same thing goes for “thee but not for me” cultural conservatives.
Man, I hate the whole “oh, we can’t be too politically correct” dodge whether it comes from the right or the left. It’s just a way for white people to not have to discuss anything uncomfortbaly racial, especially when it means white people are gonna look bad. I’m not saying that’s what you do here, Amanda, but it just sets me off.
Oh, and count me in as someone terribly weirded out by the ads y’all’s doomaflotchey is calling up these days. It’s just…off. Like Stepford Porn.
I figure if some site like whateverthefuck.com wants to advertise here, when it’s absolutely the wrong audience for them, I’m completely in favor of it. I’ll hit the damn thing every time I come if it’ll cost them more.
Your advice to the “I’d be liberal but …” Republicult excuse makers is golden.
For your blurb review basket: “Bookmarkable cutting insight, superbly reasoned, masterfully delivered! Three cheers for Amanda!”
Where do I upload the vegetarian shawarma you deep down deserve for this?
Contraception restriction: which ones are hinting?
(lord I dread the anti-spam thingy….)
Yeah, really. You couldn’t have wanted it that badly if that’s all it takes to send you to the other side.
It’s like a person who says “I wanted to not hate black people, but some non-black-people-haters favor reparations, so I joined the KKK instead.
Who are these people? What does that even mean? […] I’m talking about these aparently real people who somehow or another bully racists, sexists, homophobes and other assorted jackasses into, I guess, quivering silence.
In my experience, a “PC bully” is anyone who expresses anything but fawning admiration for whatever kneejerk stereotype the complainer is wittering on about.
For example, if someone says “drug users are thieving scum”, and you pipe up saying “Actually, I use drugs, but I don’t steal and you didn’t seem to consider me scum before you knew I use drugs. Perhaps your perception of drug users is incorrect”, then that makes you a PC bully.
Who are these people? What does that even mean? […] I’m talking about these aparently real people who somehow or another bully racists, sexists, homophobes and other assorted jackasses into, I guess, quivering silence.
In my experience, a “PC bully” is anyone who expresses anything but fawning admiration for whatever kneejerk stereotype the complainer is wittering on about.
For example, if someone says “drug users are thieving scum”, and you pipe up saying “Actually, I use drugs, but I don’t steal and you didn’t seem to consider me scum before you knew I use drugs. Perhaps your perception of drug users is incorrect”, then that makes you a PC bully.
Eric @ 3:21, regarding limiting contraception,
Once you’ve worked through being concerned about Pandagon’s advertising (cf upstream) you might more closely read the top post. (The section I quoted links to the source.) I won’t spoil it for you.
Oh PC bullies are real. They’re just a vanishingly small minority. You know, the vegans who won’t have sex with someone who’s worn leather or the radical feminists who prattle on about not letting MTF transsexuals into the girl’s club because there’s some stain of male entitlement to them. The people who fight about whether racism or sexism is worse, forgetting that the main point is both are bad. The people so busy fighting invisible demons (Douchebag: misogynist insult or not?) that they do lose sight of the real ones.
Again, these are a vanishingly small minority, and anyone who say they left the left because of an encounter with these rare creatures is telling a fairy tale.
My problem with the hacks that spew the pro-defense and anti-big government line is that they totally misrepresent what a strong defense is all about at the various levels. A strong defense involves an alternative governing structure that is designed to replace the civil structure in the event of a breakdown of order. It is inherent in the defense network that it is a form of big government because it has to be able to step in in an emergency. The failure of these hacks is that they are encouraging a civil authority that is unable to cope with real life issues while simultaneously gutting the ability of the defense network to respond to anything but an armed insurrection.
I’m a liberal because the best defense is not being an idiot.
My problem with the hacks that spew the pro-defense and anti-big government line is that they totally misrepresent what a strong defense is all about at the various levels. A strong defense involves an alternative governing structure that is designed to replace the civil structure in the event of a breakdown of order. It is inherent in the defense network that it is a form of big government because it has to be able to step in in an emergency. The failure of these hacks is that they are encouraging a civil authority that is unable to cope with real life issues while simultaneously gutting the ability of the defense network to respond to anything but an armed insurrection.
I’m a liberal because the best defense is not being an idiot.
My problem with the hacks that spew the pro-defense and anti-big government line is that they totally misrepresent what a strong defense is all about at the various levels. A strong defense involves an alternative governing structure that is designed to replace the civil structure in the event of a breakdown of order. It is inherent in the defense network that it is a form of big government because it has to be able to step in in an emergency. The failure of these hacks is that they are encouraging a civil authority that is unable to cope with real life issues while simultaneously gutting the ability of the defense network to respond to anything but an armed insurrection.
I’m a liberal because the best defense is not being an idiot.
Sorry about the triple post, no moderation warning.
Wow, not just a crank…a Chrysler 426 Hemi crank, aka the “elephant” motor. And with the added bonus of fueling the mosy insipidly meaningless ad campaign in recent memory.
Well chosen pic Amanda, well chosen indeed.
Daddy With A Belt State is just fine. It’s only if the government gets out of the discipline and exploitation and into actual caring and sharing roles that suddenly they freak out.
It sometimes is just this, but it needn’t be. A “get the government out of the boardroom and into the bedroom” conservative can make just as coherent of a case as we “get the government out of the bedroom and into the boardroom” liberals do. In particular, one can build, based on the theories of Nisbet, an ideology wherein by making laws designed to strengthen our moral character and reign in vice, a society of virtuous citizens is created in which further government regulation is un-necessary.
Of course, such thinking is problematic on many levels. Does the cultivation of virtue really extend beyond the spheres in which virtue is cultivated? — many a person virtuous in his personal life is ruthless in business. Moreover, who gets to define what is virtue and what is vice? And doesn’t the surpression of vice in practice translate to the suppression of the vices of the poor while the rich get to live as aristocrats and Strauss’ “philosophers”?
But the idea is out there — and given the aretaic turn, is quite fashionable in some circles. If I weren’t so lazy, er, busy at work, I’d link to my old blog posts about this “coherency of conservatism”.
*
Which I never got. If you’re easily offended by a bunch of cranks to the point where you’d abandon right-minded thinking just to distance yourself from them, why on earth would you then run to the side of political spectrum where cranks run the show directly instead of nip at your heels?
A lot of what you say following this is correct, at least at a sub-conscious level. But ostensibly, at least one class of people who’ve abandoned the left because of the cranks, abandoned the left because of a specific class of cranks who had very clear double standards regarding the identities held by those who abandoned the left. OTOH, those cranks on the right, even if they were far more hateful to people of this identity, at least were willing to give people of this identity support for certain political projects.
Also, many people who have abandoned the cranks of the left frankly never met any cranks on the right in their formative years. An urban leftist, for example, would have had experience, during her formative years, with how many cranks on the right? Vs. with how many cranks on the left?
And even for people living amongst cranks on the right, the cranks on the left are still more visible being that they tend to congregate in cultural centers …
Hm. I think this vanishingly small minority holds a disproportionate share of faculty positions at certain colleges. Especially among the social science departments. Especially among faculty of a certain age (the “Baby Boomer”/ “Aging Hippie” age). I ran into far too many faculty members at my midwestern state college with those kinds of attitudes to rank it as a mere “fairy tale”. Though the number of folks with attitudes like that that I’ve encountered since leaving college is, as you say, vanishingly small. I think it’s the Ivory Tower protection in action - once you get your tenure somewhere you get so wrapped up in your one aspect of reality that you lose sight of the rest of the world.
That said, the idea that you held liberal attitudes before you met these people and they made you become conservative is not only bunk, if it were true it would only prove a juvenile attitude on your part. “Oooh, that asshole believes X so I’m going to believe not X” is not even an acceptable debate position in junior high, let alone for an adult out in the world. It’s far, far more likely that the conservative position is the one you hold, and the asshole you met gives you an excuse to maintain that position without having to justify it. Just admit that you don’t care about poverty, about equality, about health care for all, or about any other liberal concern and be honest about it.
What the national Republican party is doing does not define all Republicans country wide. In MN for instance, the governor has shrunk government while in office, my Rebublican state senator has voted consistently to shrink government, and my Republican mayor has agressively shrunk local government. National politics is driven by fringe issues and monied special interests. So Republicans pander to super right conservative Christians when they don’t represent the majority of Christians in this country because they can turn out the voting numbers to turn the election. Democrats pander to the gay community to get their votes yet really don’t deliver because they are afraid to piss off other special interests they need - see the Logo debates and every candidate but Denny saying no to gay marriage. Both parties on a national level don’t implement their platforms. If they did we would never have had don’t ask-don’t tell, we would have had a national health care plan, etc. when Clinton was pres and the national Repubs push bigger and bigger government to kiss their buddies asses too. The Democrats on the state and local level do much more in line with their party platform as well.
Don’t we see a lot of fluttering over the sensibilities of the “I wanted to be a liberal, but” types during Presidential elections?
I’m thinking in particular of the “I wanted to be a liberal, but those Chardonnay-swilling coastal elitists said something that was not perfectly positive about the South, and so I won’t vote for a Democrat” variety.
Barney Frank is awesome in this clip. Whoever that smug asshole is on the right, he needs to work on a better strategy for deflecting criticism of the Republican party.
Y’know, I’d really like to meet these fabled ultra-PC liberal social science faculty. After 12 years in higher ed, I have yet to meet one except in the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Ed and David Horowitz’s (and his ilk’s) imagination.
Maybe, as Amanda indicated, it is even a vanishingly small minority even in the Ivory Tower. If you are unlucky enough to encounter one of these creatures in the wild, it is best to just tune them out, let them rant, and then walk away.
You know, speaking as someone that recently became liberal social science faculty, I’d really like to be able to find these mystical ultra-PC versions of me, because, you know, not so much on the finding them.
Re: liberals in the news media, the ivory tower, the church or wherever.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I have a friend who is quite conservative. He complains an awful lot about “liberals” in the media, in his church, etc.
And you know what? The people about whom he complains would be called “liberal” by any conservative. The people about whom he complains would certainly pat themselves on the back about how “liberal” they are. But you know what? These people are the same people — the Broders of the world, the sensible liberals, and on the other hand a certain segment of the left that refuses to engage in any reasonable political compromise to achieve larger goals — about whom you log into left blogostan and find nothing but complaints.
Part of the reason why we aren’t “finding” these mythical liberals is because we are looking for more politically extreme versions of ourselves … but this is not at all what right wingers mean when they complain about “liberals”.
Or more precisely, this is not what the right wingers doing the complaining to bolster support for their own agenda are hoping their intended audience will picture. They hope to point to the Broders and Maudes of the world — that really do exist — in order to create a backlash against all liberals, including us.
And this strategy, for whatever reasons, is working … and I’m not sure what to do to counteract it. But certainly what Joe Sixpack means when he complains about “liberals” is not what we mean when we call ourselves “liberals”.
“Y’know, I’d really like to meet these fabled ultra-PC liberal social science faculty.”
How about all the professors who signed the letter to oust in the Duke lacrosse coach without any evidence of wrongdoing on the players part because white men of priveledge MAY have done something to a black woman? Sounds like the fit the definition.
And more deeply, not only do “conservative” views pay better, but in general I think people have a genuine values clash when they consider that that as they are exploited, so do they exploit. That is, it’s all very well to scream in outrage at how your boss screws you, but still and all, we remain white Americans who still can buy gas cheaper than anyone who doesn’t live in an actual oil-producing nation. We are still part of the nation that is on top of the global food chain. And so one semi-rational response to this dilemma–are we the screwers or the screwees?–is to line up under the banner of the Supreme Screwers, and hope to receive some of their favor for such loyalty.
This mode of thinking goes very deep into the “normal, mainstream” American character.
The Republicult now tries to slap the Liberal label on anyone standing in the immediate path of its latest plastic trumpet and drum march.
Bush was declared a Liberal (for his stance on immigration.) Arlen Specter became a Liberal (for trying to investigate corruption.) Chuck Hagel became a Liberal (for asking hard questions about the “success” of the war on Iraq.)
and so on. Look, they’re not only liars, hypocrites and douchebags, they’ll say whatever they need to keep advancing the Rethuggernaut.
They’re nuts.
It says a lot for the increasingly repellent rep of conservatism that people who are transparently and undeniably conservative must hide behind labels such as “liberal” or “libertarian”.
In particular, one can build, based on the theories of Nisbet, an ideology wherein by making laws designed to strengthen our moral character and reign in vice, a society of virtuous citizens is created in which further government regulation is un-necessary.
Isn’t that pretty much what the Victorians tried, with a notable lack of success? I mean, lack of success if you were actually trying to stop vice. If you only wanted to drive it underground, the Victorians were wildly successful.
Ellie @7:43: d’oh! Somehow that link didn’t register avec moi, the color cue only seemed to be a form of underlining. (Reading now.)
D’OH. (Still, the advertising is weird, you can’t take that from me.)
++++
Meh, comments there not very impressive.
[The Republicult now tries to slap the Liberal label on anyone standing in the immediate path of its latest plastic trumpet and drum march.]
IMO, this is because the previous tactic of “Support the Troops(War) or be labelled un-American” finally, FINALLY wore too thin. So they had to go to their “tried but true” stance.
Sarcastro, I am impressed, you sure know your cranks.