The Democrats’ quest for one-party rule
From a Kevin D. Williamson article in National Review:
They [several writers, but really much of the Democratic Party today] do not understand the United States as having two legitimate competing political camps but as suffering from a kind of infection in the form of the Republican party, which inhibits the normal and healthy — meaning Democrat-dominated — political life of the United States. They believe that something they call the “New America” has an unquestionable natural moral right to rule and that the Republican party is not a competing pole but a blockage. To write as Greenberg does that the Democratic party is to be liberated by the practical elimination of the Republican party, and hence able to operate unencumbered, is to embrace not only the end of the GOP but the end of ordinary political opposition.
This is an important point, one I was alluding to in this recent post titled “Why the left can’t accept defeat.”
Another way to put it is that in my lifetime the Democratic Party has morphed from being predominantly liberal to being predominantly leftist. Liberals (at least the kind I remember from my youth, and the shrinking number who still exist) are fine with an opposition party on the right which every now and then will win an election. Those liberals believe voters on the right to be people of goodwill who are just misguided.
The left, on the other hand, is the group described in the Williamson article. They want not just to defeat the opposition most of the time, they want to obliterate it. This obliteration can come through legal means, or semi-legal means, or it can come (ultimately, as we have seen in many Communist countries) from a never-ending and brutal attempt to kill anyone perceived as being opposed—or dangerous or extraneous in any way—and to terrify the rest of the populace into obedience.
There always were leftists among the Democrats, of course, and there still are old-fashioned liberals in today’s Party. But the balance has shifted in recent years. I believe the major part of the shift occurred from around the time of the 2000 election on. Leftism has been actively and more openly encouraged during the Obama administration and by now the shift is not the least bit secret or hidden.
Williamson writes of the American Left (in other words, of the majority of Democrats these days) that their desire to do away with the opposition takes many forms:
The only way to achieve that [political dominance they crave] would be through the political suppression of those with dissenting political views.
Which, of course, is the Left’s current agenda, from deputizing Corporate America to act as its political enforcer by making employment contingent upon the acceptance of progressive political orthodoxies to attempting to gut the First Amendment in the name of “campaign finance” regulation — it is the Democratic party, not the moral scolds of the Christian Coalition, that proposes to lock up Americans for showing movies with unauthorized political content — to grievously abusing legislative and prosecutorial powers to harass and persecute those with nonconforming political views (“Arrest Climate-Change Deniers”) and declaring political rivals “domestic terrorists,” as California Democrats have with the National Rifle Association.
Which is to say: It is not only the Republican party as a political grouping they dream of eliminating: It is Republicans as such and those who hold roughly Republican ideas about everything from climate change to gun rights, groups that Democrats in agencies ranging from state prosecutors’ offices to the IRS already — right now, not at some point in some imaginary dystopian future — are targeting through both legal and extralegal means.
The Democrats who are doing this believe themselves to be acting morally, even patriotically, and sometimes heroically. Why? Because they believe that opposition is fundamentally illegitimate.
I disagree somewhat with that last sentence. I think it’s true of some leftists. But I don’t think most leftists care about the legitimacy of their opponents or of opposition itself. That’s the sort of thinking the right indulges in far more frequently: who or what is legitimate and lawful?
No, the left doesn’t really care whether the opposition is legitimate. In fact, the more legitimate their opponents are, the more the left can justify using whatever means necessary to crush them.
I believe that the promotion of quibbles about “legitimacy”—for example, the idea that Trump is illegitimate because the Russians (ironic, isn’t it?) rigged the election, or because only the popular vote should matter, or whatever other reason the election of a Republican might be deemed illegitimate—is for the “useful idiots” who remain in the Democratic Party. They are the ones who might still care about niceties such as “legitimacy,” so these assertions are trotted out to get them onboard. But the true believers, the leftists who are activists and who plan to be in charge when they achieve their goals, do not give a hoot about legitimacy. The only coin of their realm is power.
[NOTE: This article about how Texas is in play sent a chill down my spine. Recall that the Beto O’Rourke did pretty well there against Ted Cruz in 2016. That O’Rourke was a strong candidate anywhere, much less in Texas, is extremely disturbing.]
This is the authoritarian temptation of all leftist parties. They are certain that they know best and will tolerate opposition only until they believe they are the majority.
The problem they have is that their theory of economics doesn’t work. The French Revolution taught us that in the beginning. Wilson brought Fascism to the left and it was popular until Hitler adopted and distorted it. Mussolini was popular in the US until he joined Hitler. The 2000 election, I agree, was the modern turning point. If Bill Clinton had kept his zipper closed, Gore might well have won and the 9/11 attack would have resulted in incalculable damage. Without Clinton’s ineptitude, and that of the CIA, the attack would have been stopped. There were multiple failures.
Kevin Williamson also believes America is “infected” with working class whites who deserve to suffer and see their communities die. And this totalitarian threat from the Left doesn’t seem to bother him all that much when he’s sticking a knife in Donald Trump who…you know…is currently the primary opponent and target of these eliminationists and chief defender of people like Kevin Williamson.
I feel like I’m going to have to keep making this point for the rest of my life but the rise of Donald Trump wasn’t just a reaction to the Left. Trump is mostly a reaction to the feckless and malignant “leadership” of jagoffs like Williamson.
Mike
Modern day Democrats are not liberals they are progressives. Instead of eugenics they utilize climate change. Progressivism shares many traits with Islam and ends just as poorly for non-believers.
Remember that the socialists truly believed they could create heaven on earth so any means was justified to achieve that end. I believe it was the old Marxist Eric Hobsbawm who said that all those deaths would have been worth it if communism was successful. If you have to be killed to achieve the socialist workers paradise, so be it.
I agree: ” They want not just to defeat the opposition most of the time, they want to obliterate it. This obliteration can come through legal means, or semi-legal means, or it can come (ultimately, as we have seen in many Communist countries) from a never-ending and brutal attempt to kill anyone perceived as being opposed—or dangerous or extraneous in any way—and to terrify the rest of the populace into obedience.”
In modern parlance: by any means necessary.
People keep on buying more guns and ammunition. Democrats, not so much.
I hope the current battle between trannies and TERFs will peel some people away from the Dems.
Neo, I disagree with your disagreement (partial as it may be) with Kevin D. Williamson’s sentence,
Of coursethe left considers the right to be illegitimate, just as 1930s Germans believed that Jews, Slavs, and Romani, and Japanese believed Koreans and Chinese, were subhuman.
Just for the sake of argument wouldn’t the right also prefer one party rule? : ^ )
I can’t imagine many on the right objecting to that scenario. Or to the point, if either party got more than 60 seats in the Senate [filibuster proof], control of the House, control of the Supreme Court and the White House it’s darn close to elimination for at least a few years and a goal either political party pursues. But the one party scenario mentioned here is one IMO that falls into the realm of thought experiment.
I’m curious why you chose the year 2000 for the left shift? I’m reading a book now on LBJ and in 1964 the Democrats absolutely crushed Barry Goldwater and the GOP. It was a glorious time for Democrats. While Republicans were bemoaning the leftist shift. Prior to that when FDR was elected [four times] the country moved left. Republicans claimed we were going too far left. This seems to be a frequent argument in history. The Democrats said the same about moving too far right when Nixon won and then when Reagan won and Bush…. it’s seems both sides always think we’re going too far to the extremes. I don’t think we are. But maybe that is what drives the thought of wanting single party rule? The other party is viewed as going too far to the right or the left and – “boy – wouldn’t it be good to just eliminate them to the sidelines forever?” The thought is shared by many partisans of both parties. But I think it only remains a thought.
MBunge:
I believe that you are referring to this piece of Williamson’s. He doesn’t use the word “infected” nor does he say they deserve to suffer. However, he thinks they need to move on—literally—to other more viable communities and occupations. And that towns that no longer have economic viability should die rather than be artificially propped up.
It’s a fairly nasty column, the one I just linked. He wrote it in the relatively early days of the Trump candidacy, and he most definitely was anti-Trump.
Williamson likes to be controversial and incendiary. He also remains, as far as I can tell, a Never-Trumper. None of this invalidates what he wrote in the column I linked in today’s post, of course.
Montage wrote,
We now realize it started with Woodrow Wilson–who we also now realize was a racist.
Montage:
I think the right wants to stop the left from gaining permanent control. The right is upset when the Democrats are in power, which is understandable, but until the Democrats made their very recent hard left shift I never got the sense that the right wanted to stay in power forever.
It’s a mark of the left that they want and think they deserve and will do anything to stay in power forever. I’ve never noticed that the right feels that way about the right.
Montage:
I think I made it clear that 2000 was not the beginning of leftism in the Democratic Party. There was plenty before that. But 2000 was the beginning of the extreme animus towards the right in general and the feeling that the right had no right (!) to ever be in power. I recall the animus as ramping up in the aftermath of the terribly close 2000 election, in which the Democrats felt cheated, and that feeling was stirred up and magnified and built on by the ever-growing left.
Montage, I can’t answer for Neo, but I agree with her general date of 2000, though I would put it as 9/11/2001. It’s true the Dems went crazy after the Bush election, but I see that continuing not long after 9/11 when the defense of Muslim extremism started full on. Maybe it was a way to get after the terrible Bush due to their sour grapes over the election, I don’t know. However I certainly detected a huge cultural shift around that time.
In academia, where I was, it’s around that date that I started to see major shifts in faculty attitudes as younger, more radical/progessive faculty began to replace older, liberal faculty. Those older faculty I got along with and respected tremendously. We may not have agreed politically, but they were never out to silence or eliminate those who disagreed with them. That, of course, has all changed.
Ira:
I wasn’t saying that some on the left don’t think the right illegitimate. I am saying that whether they are or aren’t is irrelevant to activist leader leftists. They use the idea of lack of legitimacy as a tool to further entice into the leftist fold those who care about such things. But the activist leftists themselves do not care about the issue of legitimacy, and in fact the more legitimate the opposition is, the more they must be fought with any tools at hand.
“None of this invalidates what he wrote in the column I linked in today’s post, of course.”
As they say, a broken clock is right twice a day. I suspect that Williamson’s sudden attention to the eliminationist elements on the Left has a great deal to do with a desire to maintain his viability on the Right after royally whizzing on a substantial portion of it.
Beyond that, though, the biggest challenge facing the Right today isn’t from the other side. After all, you can’t control what the other side does and if they beat you politically, it’s usually more your fault than theirs. The biggest challenge facing the Right is that its intellectual class is “infected” with people like Williamson who have been proven very wrong about some very important things and have never been held accountable for any of it.
Mike
I agree that the post election electioneering in 2000 and 2001 was a spectacle and turning point. I read some of the Florida Chief Justice’s dissent of Florida’s Supreme Court hyper-political decision that led to the unseemly SCOTUS decision. The dissent was scathing.
Almost shocking was the attitude that rigged recounts is FL was OK, but that the SCOTUS stepping in to block it, was a bridge too far.
Similarly, I think that the Dems blew a gasket when McConnell and the Senate stopped Obama’s Garland appointment. Remember that some Republicans (I forgot who) actually talked openly about being a “resistance” to Obama’s “transformation” of America, even before the Garland appointment came up. Most unwise.
It’s all about naked power grabs at this point, and even a rational (I hope) cynic like me is a little surprised by how open and brazen the Dems are about it now. That is partly driven by a media that will cover up or obfuscate anything.
Neo,
One point I will agree with you on is that the modern left wants to see racism, homophobia, etc eliminated and they view the right as owning those positions. So they want to get rid of the thoughts and writings and speeches on the subject and too get rid of those who hold those views. But I think it’s mainly because those have been the subjects most written about by the media. The subjects that have the right seething and wanting to eliminate leftist thoughts and deeds is frequently missing. But I don’t think it’s any less strong a feeling.
I don’t believe in being politically correct on this subject. If someone truly believes in the Republican platform and they think the Democratic platform sucks [or is dangerous] then why is it wrong to admit you want them gone forever? I can understand a true independent or swing voter or moderate hedging because they maybe don’t trust either side or maybe they vote for the person before the party. But if someone is totally committed to one political side [or party] then I think the thought of eliminating the other side is not out of the norm or even a bad thought. Immature perhaps, but while I think being righteous and fair is nice many would prefer their side and only their side were always leading the country.
Beto was strong here in Texas because Ted Cruz is markedly disliked, even by many Republicans. Once that race was over Beto had to do more than just be the anti-Ted, and we can all see how well that’s working out for him.
Montage:
I’ll tell you why.
I am a realist. Yeah, I want the world to be perfect and to conform to my idea of perfect. But I’m not hubristic enough to think my idea of a perfect world is always correct.
Therefore I believe in the classical liberal (not leftist) value of free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Leftists do not. I also believe that the leftist impulse is a human one that cannot be eliminated or stamped out, only argued against, hopefully successfully. And so I do not believe elimination of the left is possible (or even desirable in the sense that what it would take to do it would be as bad as the left itself).
Neo,
I appreciate your personal views on the subject. Personally – although our political positions are different – I too agree that it would not be desirable to eliminate one side or the other. But I’m an older liberal – as in, I’m not afraid to hear ideas nor do I want to eliminate ideas I don’t like.
don’t believe in being politically correct on this subject. If someone truly believes in the Republican platform and they think the Democratic platform sucks [or is dangerous] then why is it wrong to admit you want them gone forever?
The Democrats adhere to notions which strike at structural factors which contain and regulate competition. Among the things they adhere to:
1. It is the business of appellate courts to annul legislation passed by the opposition (when that is inconvenient to us) and to never stand in our way.
2. It is legitimate to use the IRS and the FBI to harass the opposition.
3. Higher education is their property.
4. Public broadcasting is their property
5. Primary and secondary schooling is their property.
6. Social media is their property.
7. No one has freedom of contract. Lawyers must be able to second-guess everyone’s conduct. However, tech companies have comprehensive freedom of contract because reasons.
8. Morris Dees is the gold standard
9. Appropriate campaign finance regulations allows public employee unions plenary discretion over their fundraising and utterance. However (business) corporations are not persons with free speech rights, because reasons. Unless of course they’re media companies or tech companies, then they do.
10. Any restrictions on immigration are illegitimate. ICE is a terrorist outfit.
11. All restrictions on benefits to aliens are a violation of ‘equal protection’.
12. All efforts to contain vote fraud are ‘voter suppression’. When they might reduce our tallies.
Kurt Schlichter keeps saying leftists want us dead. He may be right about at least some of them.
Did I forget one from the 6th circuit?
13. Legal restrictions on racial preference schemes are ‘unconstitutional’.
14. So are employment tests which don’t generate a demographic mix pleasing to the bench.
sharksauce,
Cruz was pretty wonkish before 2016. Since then he seems to be loosening up a bit and showing some humor. Is that changing his favorability?
Montage:
That means that, by today’s definitions, you’re practically a conservative.
I kid you not.
expat,
Cruz certainly is loosening up, which has me betting he isn’t planning on running in 2024.
Cruz losing a Senate race wouldn’t be a bellwether IMO — Cornyn losing would be your big turn.
That means that, by today’s definitions, you’re practically a conservative. -neo
I still answer to being a classical liberal, but I recognized somewhere in the 2000s that meant I was conservative for all practical purposes and most Democrats don’t know what a classical liberal is anymore.
Montage & Neo:
The desire to work within established traditions to promote the best qualities of our society sounds positively (and proudly) conservative to me.
I see the Democrats’ descent into leftism as a stock chart going south, slow then fast, slow then fast, etc.
We are in one of the fast phases and I don’t yet see a bottom coming.
It’s tricky to put a date on when things really changed, since each phase built on what came before — all the way back to Woodrow Wilson as Mike K noted. The early 2000s with the one-two punch trauma of the Florida recount, then 9-11, is a good choice.
OTOH I’d also recommend the Obama years. You all recall Obama as the Messiah, the LightBringer. While Obama was making big socialist moves and tearing open racial scabs, Republicans resisted mightily and managed to thwart much of his agenda. IMO that’s when the goal of obliterating the Republican Party hit the Democratic mainstream.
And after Trump was elected — fuhgeddaboudit.
Conservatives like Sohrab Ahmari would be quite happy obliterating the opposition, so that they could “enforce our order and our orthodoxy”.
Conservatives like Sohrab Ahmari would be quite happy obliterating the opposition, so that they could “enforce our order and our orthodoxy”.
And we have your word on it.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism
Ann thinks no drag queen nights at the public library means tyranny.
I believe the upper levels of the Democratic Party have been licking their chops on their demographic conquest of the US since the early 2000s.
Ruy Teixeira’s book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority” (2002), emboldened many Democrats to see one-party rule as an all but done deal. To then see so much of Obama’s agenda fail to pass and have Hillary lose to Trump enraged them.
However, Teixiera’s thesis is still a reasonable bet, if premature in 2002. The Millenial vote in 2016 was 55-37%, Clinton-Trump.
Trump is buying us time and, knock on wood, he’ll win in 2020. But after that the American future is in serious jeopardy from the leftist agenda.
That means that, by today’s definitions, you’re practically a conservative.
I will say I cringe whenever I watch MSNBC or when an anchor on CNN goes on a rant. But I feel no better watching Fox or listening to conservative radio. Technically an old[er] liberal who prefers a good movie or book over today’s political reality.
Montage:
If I based my political views on listening to conservative talk radio I doubt I’d have the political views I have today. My views are based on my own observations and thinking, history, and the reading of certain writers such as Thomas Sowell in particular.
huxley:
Agreed.
However, sometimes events end up changing a lot of minds.
And relying on demographics, although understandable (and perhaps a good bet) isn’t foolproof. It really depends if, over time, the newcomers assimilate, and how much.
NOTE to Neo:
why are most of your comments in boxes except the one at 5:20pm?
Something in the blog system?
It always makes me wonder if it’s really you.
Neo, I was really confused by your (partial) disagreement with Williamson’s illegitimacy point.
Then when I went back and re-read his statement, I got the distinct sense that he sees a connection between morality and legitimacy (he even uses “acting morally” earlier in that paragraph). Whereas your interpretation of legitimacy seems to be connected to legality, instead, which does seem to be more in line with the precise definition of the term. That makes me wonder if Williamson considers “legitimate” to also have a moral implication contrary to definition (as I also tend to do).
I quit reading Williamson after he made his disrespect for working class people who cling to their communities clear (because I came from a economically dying community, and still miss it, some decades later). Thus, I would not have seen this had there not been the reference. Thus it’s interesting that he and I might have mis-used the same term.
All that said, I do wonder if the left really realizes how lit up their opposition now is, after the ongoing 3-years and running tantrum they’ve thrown. I know my eyes are wide f’n open today.
Ann:
I read that entire essay of Ahmari’s that you linked and referenced, and I must say it is very unclear what he is actually advocating that conservatives (or conservative Christians, which is who he is actually seeming to address) ought to do except to not be so polite. He writes:
I could go on to quote more and more and more of his essay, but I don’t see much about “obliterating” the enemy, although he does speak of enemies and of defeating them. At any rate, whether Ahmari is advocating what you are suggesting he is advocating or whether he is not, I have little doubt that you could find a random conservative or two—or people who call themselves conservatives—who are advocating the obliteration of the enemy, the left. Maybe even there are a couple who would like to obliterate every Democrat on earth, or anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan.
That is irrelevant to the fact that it is rare on the right and common on the left.
Also, although it doesn’t have much to do with the topic at hand, Ahmari is completely incorrect in his offhand remark dissing Orthodox Jews vis a vis vaccinations. He writes:
Ahmari is too clever there for his own good. He hasn’t even done the most elementary research, and is repeating a falsehood. I wrote an entire post on the subject of Orthodox Jews and vaccines. There is no opposition to vaccines from ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Hey, things work until they don’t.
The left has spent decades attacking American culture in all its forms, opposed by only the hapless GOP, which never even noticed. The GOP base noticed, however. Hence, the mass departure from the gop plantation over to Trumpland.
My take is that the left has been the left since the left began- only in the US these loathsome folks were restrained by their sure knowledge that openly mentioning their actual beliefs would never win them enough elections to actually enact their vile schemes. But in recent years this changed, thanks to the sheer worthlessness of the pretend opposition by the gop.
Leftists stopped believing so much that they needed to hide, and rank-and-file conservatives stopped believing that the GOP had our backs. Thus, Trump.
There’s no going back. The left won’t accept any sane moderate, because long experience has taught them that they don’t need to- and perhaps never did. The right won’t accept the usual craven losers of the gop, because long experience has taught us that this will only lead to more abject failure- and perhaps always would have.
I suggest everyone look up a book titled “The Fourth Turning,” written by a pair of academics. I think it sums up what is going on today pretty well, despite being written in 1998. Bottom line- we’re in for rougher times ahead. As if that wasn’t obvious, now.
Ann:
In addition, I wouldn’t say that Ahmari is typical of American conservatives. He is a Catholic convert born in Iran who came to the US at the age of 13. He was a Marxist and atheist, and converted quite recently, in 2016.
expat on September 12, 2019 at 3:22 pm said:
I hope the current battle between trannies and TERFs will peel some people away from the Dems.
* * *
The problem is that the peeled people will NOT go to the GOP, similar to the Walkaway folks.
There is no middle-of-the-road party for disaffected Democrats, nor one for half of the schismatic Republicans.
And the two factions probably won’t make common cause, either.
Four parties in the USA gets … interesting.
There have been as many before, usually just three, and then things get shaken out and people discover there really are only two viable contenders, because the Presidency is not awarded by a coalition of legislators, but is a winner-take-all contest.
Neo:
I actually linked to a different piece, this one: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sohrab-ahmari-vs-david-french/
Yes, the thing about Ahmari is that he’s not at all clear about just how he’d go about seeing his preferred order and orthodoxy implemented. And he is not a typical American conservative, but there are others who agree with him.
In any case, there’s been a lot of back and forth on this, most recently a debate in D.C. between Ahmari and David French moderated by Ross Douthat. I just now found an interesting piece on the debate that’s worth a read: “The Ahmari-French Debate Was About Theology, Not Politics” https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-ahmari-french-debate-was-about-theology-not-politics/
I jumped to the end of the comments to say this, so apologies if the point has already been made:
Neo said: “But I don’t think most leftists care about the legitimacy of their opponents or of opposition itself.”
I took Williamson to mean *moral* legitimacy, not *legal* legitimacy. There are some viewpoints so wicked that they cannot be treated as being debatable. We aren’t obliged to treat a plan to exterminate Jews as something up for discussion. Leftists have put vast categories of disagreement into this category. and so don’t feel any sense that they’re doing anything wrong in attempting to suppress those views. If you are, for instance, opposed to their favored health care plan, you are “opposed to health care”–that is, you believe people should die in the street if they can’t afford health insurance.
This goes back to what I was saying the other day about the absolute moral confidence of the left.
I started to email you the link to Williamson’s piece but figured you’d see it anyway.
I read that entire essay of Ahmari’s that you linked and referenced, and I must say it is very unclear what he is actually advocating that conservatives (or conservative Christians, which is who he is actually seeming to address) ought to do except to not be so polite.
Many years ago, Pat Buchanan had this to say, “When the mob is coming to get the old man, you don’t have him sit down and write out a list of his ‘mistakes’. You start firing from the upper floors”. French has the soul of an elementary school hall monitor. His take on current political problems is driven by his distaste for the president as a person. That extends to prominent evangelicals congenial to the president, and, in fact, to the president’s generic supporters (whom he contrives to identify with the rude characters who sent ugly images to his wife). Ahmari is polite about French. Some of his other critics aren’t.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/375423.php
Yes, the thing about Ahmari is that he’s not at all clear about just how he’d go about seeing his preferred order and orthodoxy implemented. And he is not a typical American conservative, but there are others who agree with him.
You haven’t been paying attention, and you fancy it’s his fault. Think of the legal regime which applied in this country in 1962, and maybe you will get an idea.
Ann:
The fact that there are “others” who agree with him is not the point. How many? And what on earth is it that they’re agreeing about? That French is misguided? And too polite? Well, then count me in, as well. I agree with him on those things. I also agree that the right needs to fight harder and tougher. So what?
And Ahmari is completely wrong about Orthodox Jews and vaccinations.
Williamson’s policies are just as leftist as the rest of the Democrat field, but she knows something they won’t admit.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/12/marianne-williamson-conservatives-nicer-lefties/
This piece says that Ahmari has some sympathy with integralism. It then lists 10 points about what integralism espouses; here are two of them:
And relying on demographics, although understandable (and perhaps a good bet) isn’t foolproof. It really depends if, over time, the newcomers assimilate, and how much.
neo: True. When it comes to predicting the future more than a few months out, the straight line is usually not your friend.
However, it’s not just immigrants I worry about. I continue to be spooked by how comfortably socialist the young are. Progressives seem to have convinced them that socialism doesn’t mean Venezuela or North Korea, but Sweden and Denmark. Not true, of course, but so far it’s working.
A university anecdote: My Computer Logic Design class is large so it is held in a theater-style room for televised classes. For the first week and a half only the front of the room was lit up, while us students sat in the dark and watched the professor. It was hard enough to take notes, but then the prof would give us problems to solve in our seats on the tiny swing-out desktops.
I tried to work by the light of my laptop screen, but it was no go. I was reluctant to say anything because I still feel new and figured the other students knew the score better. But finally I said something. The prof couldn’t find the right light switches, but by next class we had adequate illumination to see our work.
One could read too much into this, but when I was in college in the seventies someone would have spoken up almost immediately.
Ann:
So what?
What part of that is amari advocating? How many people agree with it?
These are very fringe beliefs on the right. Very.
May be fringe beliefs, but since Ahmari’s attack on French and classical liberal values they’ve been getting a lot of attention. And who knows what Ahmari truly advocates, he’s not been very forthcoming at all about that.
If the Left is out to obliterate the Right, the handing the Presidency to Hillary Clinton in 2016 like Williamson and the NeverTrumpers wanted to do would have been suicidally dumb. I confess I don’t give any clicks to National Review but am I wrong to believe that Williamson never touches on that particular subject?
Mike
https://freebeacon.com/politics/dems-secretly-fielded-thousands-of-activists-to-manipulate-media-clinton-library-docs-show/
I’m surprised the Clintons didn’t destroy the evidence.
It’s always about the image, never about the substance.
Democrats default to deception.
Internet trolls still use the same techniques.
Hillary claimed Trump’s people manipulated media because that’s exactly what she had already done – but she had to put it on the Russians, and even that was false.
More on “peeling” people away from the Democrats: it’s the economy that will do it.
https://spectator.org/why-nc-9-should-frighten-the-democrats/
Of course, when the Democrats get frightened, they get mean.
Well, meaner.
It is really, really important to Ann that Sohrab Ahmari, an individual who the vast majority of Americans have never even heard of, be seen as the face of American conservatism.
“getting a lot of attention”
From whom?
“And who knows what Ahmari truly advocates, he’s not been very forthcoming at all about that.
Yes, maybe he wants to put everyone to the right of Richard Spencer into a woodchipper!! Who knows??
MBunge:
I’ve read a number of Williamson’s pieces but certainly not all of them or anywhere near that. I know he didn’t like Trump and still doesn’t. But there are different degrees of NeverTrumpers. Some don’t like Trump but don’t advocate voting for Hillary and don’t say they wish she was president. Some (Kristol comes to mind) did say that. Which type is Williamson?
Ann:
Ahmari’s getting lot of attention compared to the near-zero attention he usually gets, I suppose. However, I can’t say that I had even heard of this brouhaha with French before, although obviously it has garnered some attention. I see, doing a search, that there’s a big article about it in The New Yorker. My guess is that some of the attention is from liberal/left outlets like that, because they think that Ahmari—who most conservatives couldn’t care less about—can be made to look like a bad advertisement for conservatism if they play him up and act like he’s important and influential and has a big following.
Just now I skimmed a bit of the article and I think my hunch is correct. The pro-Trump Ahmari is quite extreme, and they want to paint him as the voice of Trumpism. Well, I support a lot of what Trump does and I disagree with a great deal of French’s positions, but I have no sympathy for and very little agreement with Ahmari, and my guess is that most conservatives (even those who support Trump) feel that way.
I am a blogger immersed in the news and discussions of the day, and I had completely missed the Ahmari/French feud and everything connected with it, till you brought it up on this blog just now. And yet the New Yorker author writes: “For several weeks [after Ahmari attacked French], it seemed that every major figure within the conservative movement, and also many outside of it, weighed in on the debate.” Oh, really? Then he quotes Times House Conservative Bret Stephens, Ben Domenech, and the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
How did I somehow miss this incredibly important conversation in which all important conservative thinkers participated? Bret Stephens? Excuse me?
What we have here is a form of the “A Man For All Seasons” speech about “cutting a great road through the law to get after the devil.” It’s an old quandry. Modern-day American conservatism takes the Thomas More side in the sense of defending the rule of law even to “get after the devil.” Ahmari—who may have been affected more by his early upbringing than he might think—takes the opposite point of view. He is in an extreme minority on the right. However, on the left, that is the majority view. Get the difference?
The Democratic Party has demonstrated that it is the party of personal destruction.
It also has demonstrated that when it gets its way it will “fundamentally transform” America and that when it does not get its way, it will promote the destruction of the country (which is just another facet of “fundamental transformation”).
It has demonstrated extraordinary hypocrisy—which has become, for them, an art form—rampant adolescent rage and horrifying derangement (read, “insanity”)—all under the rubric (or excuse, if you prefer) of “a higher morality”.
For starters. It will all get a whole worse. (Because “morality”….)
And some people still seem to want to talk about nuance and “but Republicans”….
Ann is back to troll mode.
I agree with Neo that the Dems (let’s call them the way they are identified on ballots) don’t care about legal legitimacy. But they DO care, very much, about moral legitimacy. To a large extent it’s actually moral superiority.
They want good things. Their morality, superiority, legitimacy is based on the goodness of the things they want.
1) They want good things, coming from laws that make those good things happen 2) Anybody who opposes such a law is against the good thing
3) Those against the law want the not-good things, want the evil things
4) Those who want evil things are evil
Certainly there are many Dems who just want power, but most Dems just want the good things, and support laws requiring the good things to exist. This is Magic thinking.
The problem for Dems is that, in reality, all laws designed to make the good things always have unintended bad results. And most often, the total of the many bad results is more than the good results. This is always a complex argument, and, even when true, is easy to disbelieve by those who want the good things. (Gun control, health care, education…)
It is especially easy to disbelieve arguments about possible bad results when those arguments are made by people who don’t even want the good things, or even want the bad things, or even are bad themselves. The Dems who just want power are happy to promote this disbelief by the “enlightened”, the magic thinkers, so that the power-hungry folk don’t have to actually even argue about the real results of their policies — they can just claim pure intentions and goodness. The opposition of Dems to Free Speech is the most obvious sign that the power-hungry Dems are in control of the Democratic Party.
The power-hungry Dems and the simplistic pure intention Dems are both happier with the idea that Reps who disagree with their laws are evil. So that’s the media and academic underlying feeling, usually unspoken – that Reps are evil. [Reps need to stop having the gov’t fund Dem college indoctrination fun camps.]
When did the Dems “start” doing this?
When did the Dems stop believing in God?
The increasing feeling by Dems that Reps are evil is essentially matched by the increasing number of Dems who stopped believing in God, who stopped believing in a Being that is greater than Man.
Roe v Wade, 1973, is the single most important date of the change, which is where the culture war is mixed with the denied yet evident Dem war against Christianity.
Funny, sad, how so many folk both disbelieve in God, yet think Reps are evil, without even understanding that “evil” is “against God”.
This piece says that Ahmari has some sympathy with integralism. It then lists 10 points about what integralism espouses; here are two of them:
That piece also said that the programmatic content of advocates of ‘integralism’ is variable (actually vague) and you’ve added the weasel phrase ‘some sympathy’. Guess what, Ann. Any orthodox Catholic who ponders political life has ‘some sympathy’ with it, even as they might critique it.
We’re having this discussion about the writings of a corps of intellectuals who could meet in convention in a linen closet. Ann is spooked by John Rao, Thomas Droleskey, Thaddeus Kozinski, and Robert Kraynak. Boo, sister.
Which type is Williamson?
Neo, if you read Williamson, you discover two important drivers.
1. Contempt for his mother, of the matrix in which he was reared, and of the sort of people who continue to live in Lubbock.
2. General arrogance. (See the stories he tells about himself. He either has no conception of how unreasonable he is or he doesn’t care).
It’s not difficult to locate social data which refute his various prejudices. Williamson’s not interested in that sort of empirical testing, however.
The Democratic Party has demonstrated that it is the party of personal destruction.
The next time I encounter a partisan Democrat of any description who says, in plain terms, “you know, relying on accusations from a woman who cannot provide any evidence that she ever met the person she’s accusing isn’t a fair or prudent thing to do” will be the first.
“Which type is Williamson?”
2016 was, like most elections, a binary choice. If Trump could not be allowed to win, then Hillary must. Or you could say Trump is horrible BUT the alternative is worse. Williamson was clearly of the former thinking, not the latter.
And Williamson demonstrates what type is his by continuing to be strongly anti-Trump. Though I disagreed with it, a supposed conservative being anti-Trump in 2016 was one thing. Being an anti-Trump conservative in 2019 is something else. You still don’t have to love him but any honest and rational conservative should be more kindly disposed to Trump based on his performance as President.
Again, if the Left is set on not just beating the Right but delegitimizing and obliterating them, then NeverTrumpers were wrong to waste their energy on him instead of the real threat. Indeed, their attacks on Trump and his supporters only served to legitimize the Left’s eliminationist thinking.
Mike
Art Deco:
I already learned, just from that one article by Williamson about French, that he doesn’t do his homework and writes off the top of his head. I’m referring to the Jews and vaccinations part.
I’d forgotten about this:
https://www.amazon.com/40-More-Years-Democrats-Generation/dp/1416596283
These types I suspect tore their hair out when the Democrats had their ass handed to them in 2010.
From this past June: “The Ahmari/French debate: A reading list” — It starts like this: “If you printed out and stacked up every piece written about the dispute between First Things contributor Sohrab Ahmari and National Review writer David French, it wouldn’t quite go up 68,000 miles—that would be the $22 trillion national debt, stacked by ones—but it would be towering nonetheless”.
Ann:
Are you being purposely obtuse?
Your reading list proves my point. This was inside baseball, mostly confined to the following: (1) people really really into disputes about Christianity (2) NeverTrumpers (“The Bulwark,” for example) and House Conservatives in liberal outlets (3) National Review, the periodical for which Williamson writes.
This was NOT a dispute among most conservatives or discussed among them. Neither Ahmari nor the vast majority of the others at this point is a leading conservative thinker unless that person is a NeverTrumper or closely associated with NeverTrumpers and simpatico with them. This is some dispute within Christianity, if anything, far more than it’s a dispute within actual conservatism except for the NeverTrumper vs. the-rest-of-them segment. NeverTrumpers are a small and marginalized group at present, and mostly in league with the left at present, which loves to blow this story up as though Ahmari is some major conservative voice.
huxley and I were discussing the TV show “West Wing” on the Brexit thread, and he made this observation which I think is pertinent to the question of “when the Dems go around the bend in calling Republicans evil?”
huxley on September 12, 2019 at 7:56 pm said:
* * *
That was what I was thinking as well.
We all know the drill about communist infiltration and Wilson the Rabid Progressive, but the Dems maintained a veneer of civility for a long time, which they finally jettisoned, as I understand the history: It’s that Overton Window thing.
(1) Despite taking turns in office with GOP presidents and/or congresses, no really serious set-back to the leftist agenda took place after Wilson, even if there were occasional retrograde motions: FDR made up 20 years of “lost” ground and then some, and Eisenhower was just a speed-bump AFAIK without more research.
(2) JFK and LBJ, even though they might be considered centrist-conservatives these days, still pushed the leftist agenda forward, but Nixon was unraveling their tapestry and had to be stopped, which he was; because of the hype around Watergate, it became acceptable to talk about at least some Republicans as at least “very bad” if not quite “evil.” I might be wrong about that, but even at the height of Watergate, when I was in college, I think the invective was limited to Nixon & Crew, not extended to the entire party.
(3) Carter’s forward movement, such as it was, came to a screeching halt with Reagan and started rolling backwards, not only domestically but including the fall of the USSR; however, the end of Soviet Russia was “small” when compared to the inroads the left had made in US & European institutions; in fact, it may have been a positive development for the Gramscian March by lulling the West in complacency — why be scared of Red Commies when there no longer were any?
The negative verbiage that was “acceptable” when used in discourse about the GOP and conservatives seems to me to have ratcheted up in direct proportion to the number of leftists policies RR dismantled or slowed (and he didn’t do enough even so).
(4) Clinton just flat didn’t do enough to satisfy the left, and he ruined their hold on government with his impeachment and scandals they couldn’t get totally covered up (unlike Teddy Kennedy’s).
West Wing aired HERE, with 7 seasons between September 22, 1999
and May 14, 2006, beginning in the next-to-last year of Clinton’s tenure.
(5) Then they lost to GWB — twice! — and we all remember the foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric that started being seen even in premier mainstream publications, even if only as part of their “reporting,” as our so-called-journalists still maintained the appearance of impartiality in the news, although editorials barred no holds when excoriating Bushitler, who was not just misguided and stupid, but now actually called evil, and so were his supporters IIRC (guilty by association).
West Wing, I think, had to remain more civil than its writers and actors would have liked, because of the constraints on broadcast TV, and because lots of Republicans actually liked the show as much as the Democrats, although possibly for different reasons, hence the Republicans in general and the character played by Alda were never shown as irredeemably evil, just not enlightened.
(6) Obama the Light-Bringer finally got the leftist train back on the track, by pen and by phone since he didn’t have the support of most of the people, and Hillary Clinton was supposed to put everything in concrete.
(7) And suddenly, there was Trump.
Really, the hard-left & the Dem leadership have always thought conservatives were evil, but they gradually gave themselves permission to say it out loud, and accustomed the public to hearing their invective in venues that were further and further removed from politics, until now it is ubiquitous.
I don’t know how they can go back from that without a complete reset of the Democratic Party and the ouster of the Left from all positions of power, and a couple of generations spent purging Academia and News Media.
On the question of peeling off Democrats, and what kind of Parties will result if they both fracture:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/are-blacks-moving-towards-the-center-as-their-party-lurches-to-the-left.php
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/voters-dont-like-democrats-either.php
I came across this recently — maybe from following a link from someone here or on another thread — but it seems relevant to the Democrats’ Quest:
America’s Ruling Class And the perils of revolution.
by ANGELO CODEVILLA, July 16, 2010, 4:20 PM
RTWT
https://spectator.org/americas-ruling-class/
From this past June: “The Ahmari/French debate: A reading list” — It starts like this: “If you printed out and stacked up every piece written about the dispute between First Things contributor Sohrab Ahmari and National Review writer David French, it wouldn’t quite go up 68,000 miles—that would be the $22 trillion national debt, stacked by ones—but it would be towering nonetheless”.
You listed 22 articles, 3 by Ahmari and French, 2 by writers for liberal outlets, and 1 by someone from the Reason Foundation.
Correction. Two from Ahmari / French and two from the Reason Foundation. You’ve also got two others from French’s editors and two from Ahmari’s editors. Two are from the coterie on Pierre Omidyar’s patronage. They’re on his patronage because their previous patrons cut them off when they ran out of readers. (A number of The Bulwark‘s contributors were recruited off liberal outlets, btw). You’ve got one of Wick Allison’s clients, who writes for a publication with 1/10th the paid circulation of the one he resigned from in 2002.
neo on September 13, 2019 at 4:43 pm said:
Ann:
Are you being purposely obtuse?
Your reading list proves my point. This was inside baseball,
* * *
Art Deco outlines the list, and Neo is correct: I read the initial two posts by Ahmari and French, and dismissed the fracas as inconsequential. That the NeverTrump cotillion and others ran with it is indicative only of one thing: their need to defend French’s position, because it is their position.
FWIW, PowerLines Picks today included a report on the first debate between Ahmari & French.
https://americanmind.org/discourse/debates-are-no-substitute-for-politics/
That the author calls it “the most important debate among social conservatives in recent years,” and that another debate is scheduled, speaks only to the wasteland of today’s establishment conservative thought (see the List of Articles).
The analysis in this article basically concludes that neither Ahmari nor French will specify any particular course of action that would actually lead to their joint preferred outcome (resurgence of social conservatism in culture & government), but insist on arguing about their differences over the proper abstract means to that elusive end.
It’s “marginal” and “insider baseball” because the social conservatives among the public are busy dealing daily with the impact of social-leftistist government regulations on their personal lives, and aren’t even reading about the sparring of pundits in a very small ring.
FWIW, I think the debate is intellectually worth having, and that the best action plan will be somewhere between Ahmari’s aggressiveness and French’s reticence, but I doubt that what actually occurs politically will be the result of reasoned debate.