Tuesday, October 26, 2010

What is modern conservatism?

This question has been going through my mind all semester as each week I read some new conservative intellectual tract form my class on the subject. First, they are very broad and diverse in their ideas. Second, there is none of the business worship and hate for anything non-business that characterizes the idiots panting for power in next week's election. Third, there are many threads of what a dictionary definition of conservatism entails, such as respect for tradition, the land, religion, individual freedom, and the freedom of groups and institutions between the individual and the state. Maybe that is more of an encyclopedia definition, but the idea of maintaining connection with the past and caution about the future definitely holds, as do the idea of conserving the good of our society and being on guard against rapid change.

Many ideas sound ugly to our ears, being good Americans holding the ideas of democracy, equality and the inherent goodness of people, and in favor of aristocracy in many forms. But, when the frame is pierced aristocracy as they define it actually seems something good for society for the most part. Here is the example that inspired this post, from Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology by Peter Viereck writing in 1949:

"In one sense, the concept of civil liberties is aristocratic and against democratic rule. If you insist on civil liberties, and there are few things more worthy of insistence, then you must be prepared to say: 'Even if a fairly elected, democratic majority of 99% wants to lynch all Negroes, Jews, Catholics, labor leaders, or bankers, it is our moral and legal duty to resist the majority, though we die in the attempt.' Guarding the Bill of Rights even against majorities and even against the people's will, the American Constitution performs an aristocratic and conservative function." (p. 77)

So... are the conservatives today, trampling on the civil liberties of Muslims, GLBTs, educators, unions, and so forth, actually conservative? Aristocracy, in many guises seems more the guardian of civilization than the arbiter of privilege so often invoked by right-wing populists. Viereck in this book argues that conservatism defends against both radical and reactionary swings. Now, in the US of 2010, what is tradition? I would argue that our traditions of the day depend on an aristocracy to faithfully execute the promises made by the populace between generations. Not any crass foundering to "save the babies" or trust to the "magic of the marketplace" but to use the public sphere to give all Americans a decent education, safety both from foreign invasion and other ills of modern life (bridges that don't collapse, food and water that don't make you sick, etc.), the promise that if you work hard you can succeed and at least not have to eat cat food in your sunset years because wall st. ate your nest egg and the drug companies extort everything from you. Does this sound "conservative"? No, it sounds like the New Deal and its legacy.

Conservatives today, or the freaks using that label, are hell-bent on shredding these traditions and taking us in an entirely new direction. This utopia of free markets is free of those traditions that make America great, is this what all of you who call yourselves conservative want? Do you really believe that jobs are disappearing left and right, your home value is plummetting and your 401k is a shadow of it's former self because we haven't cut taxes enough for companies and the rich? Where were you when the great conservative george w bush ran up enormous deficits for war and doubled the national debt during his time in office? Is there some magic threshold we have to cross before companies will start building things here again in your minds?

So, just as Liberals abandoned that name for the new but equally trashed name of Progressives, all of you who liked America before wall street went wild with your money and mine have a choice to make, what do you really stand for? Or you can just knuckle under and do whatever the right-wing demogauges tell you and hope they don't hit you again or ship your job overseas.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Crossroads

Having just finished Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington, I have really been thinking about where we are going in the country. I'll need to brush up on my Chomsky before really delving into it but taking courses on both revolutions and conservative intellectual history this semester I feel like my head is about to burst. Somehow, I need to remember where I stand.

Third World America is kind of a wake-up call, even though I've been reading Kevin Phillips for years now and he has implied more or less forcefully that that is where we are headed. Extreme inequality has rendered democracy or even marginally representative republican government almost moot because the obscenely wealthy individuals can just buy politicians and incredible propaganda to hammer their interests home. Huffington sprinkles the stories of many regular Americans into her polemic to convey just how often people are being ruined through almost no fault of their own. Responsibility really is a reflection of how much power you actually have, our society is too-interconnected for anyone to be truly self-reliant unless they want to live in a cave and eat roots and bugs.

She makes a great observation I think that really helps me understand the contradictory attitudes of so many teabaggers and their sympathizers, I'll have to paraphrase but she argues that America today is like a middle-aged man who looks in the mirror and still sees himself at 25. Like the baldspot and beer belly, bad knees and high cholesterol, our country's infrastructure is decaying and falling apart in so many ways but instead of actually trying to fix things we combover and suck in our guts and try to ignore the latest bridge collapsing.

I am pretty sure we really are locked in now, the only thing that could revitalize society and our democracy is mass organizing that really gets at them, but despite having unprecedented access to information and in many cases due to outrageous unemployment, time to utilize it and reach out, we don't. The atomization is complete, look how much effort and money by the kochs it took to organize the cranky cretins to do things they want to do so badly. Civilization is hard work, so is raising a family and paying the bills, and there is just no energy or spark left in the broad mass to even think or imagine better.

I'll go out on a limb and say something really unpopular, "it's gone and it's not coming back" the American Dream of progress that is. Every dollar you spend chasing it only tightens the screws further, the nice house, car, retirement, convenience foods, clothing, job security, good schools for the kids. The fix is in. I wish the obscene amounts of money spent on the political campaigns didn't have the effects they do, but after fleecing us all these years the elite has practically unlimited clout to bash us over the head with how great life will be if we just extend the bush tax cuts or whatever. We need to reformulate society where we don't work so hard for some boss just to get paid enough to finance our credit cards and mortgages for things that we don't really need but have been programmed to want. Let go, life is about more than possessions and as they fleece us coming and going it just gives them more money to rewrite the rules and destroy anything good left in our society.

What I've discovered so far in studying revolutions is that they inevitably are beaten by money, it may mutate from feudal and aristocratic privilege to capitalistic, but exploitation is just a fact of life. Unless people are willing to fight to build or maintain a decent society, tyrants and demogauges will always wait in the wings to snatch it away.

A few things you can do...

Everyone knows that Washington is broken, government is primarily in the hands of special interests and their lobbyists over the needs of Americans or even the country as a whole. The FIRE (financial, insurance, real estate) sector and fossil fuel industries are probably the worst offenders, capturing agencies and departments to formulate policy which serves their needs over ours. While supporting Democratic candidates for office can sometimes deliver some incremental reform and progress, there are things that we can do as individuals to start curbing the power of the giant multinational corporations that harm us.

The first thing is to remember that there is no silver bullet, no magical formula that will change things overnight, nor is there a great leader out there on a white horse who will ride in and hold them accountable. It is far easier, as dubya proved, to wreck society than to make it better. And, these things aren't always easy, but doing something is better than doing nothing. Power and privilege is naturally organized and focused on their goals, while regular people are concerned with securing some measure of security in financial matters which usually precludes working and organizing for abstract goals like justice and fairness or equality.

The biggest thing is, don't give them your money. As much as possible, avoid big box stores and chain restaurants. Recognize need from want, cultivate your bullshit detector to see through all forms of advertising because it is just propaganda. Then you can begin to understand not just nightly news (go shopping, the economy is collapsing!) but the capitalist-reinforcing themes of TV and movies. If you must, and admittedly there are many human needs, shop at a store like Shopko over walmart because they have less political power and are at least Wisconsin-based.

The flipside of not shopping for wants is, not falling victim to debt. I know it is hard to make ends meet but every time you use credit cards it gives that much money to the issuer that can be used to lobby and arm-twist for undermining regulation that protects you. And in that frame, take your money out of the big bank and put it in a credit union, where you are a member and not a sheep to be sheared and the profits come back to you in the form of higher interest rates on your deposits instead of financing the lobbyist that corrupts the system. We need to scale back our expectations, marketing and advertising have unduly influenced our values and priorities, that shiny new product will probably not bring you happiness and is certainly not worth going into debt for. On the investment side of the coin, there are quite a few newer mutual funds that emphasize social responsibility and environmental consciousness, they return a reasonable rate but are not striving to eek out that extra fraction of a percent by doing rotten things.

In the longer term, getting back at the corporate elite will involve organizing and patronizing institutions that one usually associates with dirty hippies. Even in the conservative county I live in we have community gardens, farmers' markets, and are beginning to have things like time banks where you can trade an hour of your time for an hour of someone else's time. Everyone has certain skills and pooling them together can really make a difference and take a bite out of corporate profits if employed effectively.

If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that no matter what we do or how hard we try to follow the establishment's prescription for restoring prosperity and the economy, they are still going to screw us. So it is time to reject the whole thing, the other guy is still going to get laid off even if you buy the new car or whatever the case may be. They just don't care about anything but the bottom line and any part of the American dream can and will be sacrificed to further the third-worlding of America. So don't buy it.

Fixing things will be a long road, but during the Great Depression we overcame the same rabid business uber alles mentality and had almost forty years of the good life before apathetically letting the elite take over again. It will be hard but we can do it again.