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Wednesday, May 28, 2003
posted by gbarto at 4:23 AM:
Wow. Marcus is in high gear in his attack on David Horowitz. And some measure of the attack is justified. When Horowitz and others go around fearing a theocracy, they are being silly, if not downright asinine. For the left to spout such drivel is de rigeur; for a quasi-libertarian right to fret about it, however, is a sign that they have switched to that part of the libertarian current that takes itself as seriously as the communists used to.For a little perspective, it's worthwhile to reflect on the 35th anniversary of Rolling Stone. Some of this is stolen from a perfectly good San Jose Mercury News piece for which I can't find the link. But the gist of the article was that Rolling Stone rejected the left and the right, because they both were about government doing and standing for things. Said the article, Rolling Stone's philosophy of "do your own thing" evolved into "start your own business." As a result, people tuned out on what Washington was doing, which may be bad for what the Capital can thus get into, but good because no one is listening anyway. I.e., what if they held a government and nobody came? Noted the article, while Bush's inner circle is from the old right, the young up-and-comers are more likely to fit the Rolling Stone mold.
A logical extension of this Rolling Stone idea is what Rush Limbaugh hath wrought: A place where small business owners call in and complain about the way government is screwing up their ability to start and run their own businesses. Rush brought rock and roll full force into the movement born in what Terry Keenan (at least) loves to refer to as the go-go '80s. It had already been referred to as rock-and-roll Republicanism (notwithstanding the Lee Greenwood theme music) because of the presence of such luminaries as PJ O'Rourke. It seems to me that in the last few years, another top-notch comic writer, Dave Barry, has joined this current. This strain of Republicanism drifts libertarian, focusing on economic rather than social issues. And it is this strain that the David Horowitzes attempt to argue must be placated. But this part of the movement is not part of the movement, by and large. It is not people who vote Republican because they've found a party that stands exactly where they do. It drifts Republican because the Democrats are so inimical to what they stand for, which is getting up, going to work and being left alone, all while taking for granted that someone will make sure the house is still standing when they come home. Their opinion on abortion is that it is icky, possibly wrong and not something they want to get dragged into an argument on, particularly with their college roommate who had one or their Catholic neighbor who kept the baby and put it up for adoption. On public education, they are supportive because they might not be able to afford private schools for their kids, but they are not shills for the teachers' unions. On drugs, they are heartily opposed, generally, and favor maximum penalties for everyone except the neighbors' son who always seemed like such a nice young man that he couldn't have meant any harm. In short, they are people who could trend socio-con, if only they didn't have friends, parents, children, etc, whose lives are more interesting or difficult than theirs. This is particularly the case where homosexuality is concerned.
Since homosexuality came out of the closet, a lot of people have had occasion to meet gay people. On close inspection, one discovers that they eat the same foods, drive the same cars, frequent the same restaurants (if not bars) and even pay the same taxes as the rest of us. For some of us, including yours truly, that last alone is enough to declare the subject off limits to the government on principle. For many, including yours truly, there is also the experience of discovering the astonishing lack of horns, cloven hooves and other things which makes one wonder what the hell the bigots of a few years ago were jibbering about; which leaves one convinced of the full humanity of homosexuals and thus repulsed that someone would deny that humanity in the case of Bill at work, John from the club or Mary-Frances who's such a pleasant neighbor. The country has better things to do with its time than fret about this, and those who want to make a big issue of it are going to be up against a combination of libertarians like me who are flat out opposed and people like those described in the preceding paragraph who may have their doubts about the whole thing but who, because the issue has become personalized, cannot take a hardline stance against homosexuality, lest they hurt a friend, family member, friend of a family member, etc.
This is as good a place as any to pick up the theocracy question. I think Cicero is over the top in his prescriptions for society. David Horowitz is over the top in fearing that Cicero's contingent will get anywhere. Honestly, this is as embarrassing as the ultra-gun freaks who are afraid constraints on private ownership of nukes will lead to tyranny and the lefties who think that if you can't kill a kid before it reaches the age of reason, a patriarchy hitching up women to be breeding machines will be just around the corner. The point that Horowitz misses is that Bush is not an aspiring theocrat. He's an amiable guy whose life got straightened out by people who spend a lot of time thinking about a higher power and who determined that his higher power is Jesus. I wouldn't go so far as to declare myself straightened out or particularly sane, but otherwise I'm in roughly the same place as Bush - a believing Christian who does his best as best he can. And if someone's life is going in the crapper, I'm going to recommend some approaches to life that derive from the understanding of the world I've reached from that. Bush, here, is not an ayatollah. He is, in fact, like every politician - he draws on what he's seen work. And if you're Bush and you've seen yourself go from a potential embarrassment to a once-hailed family to the President of the United States, from a guy whose wife just might walk to a very happily married man, from a guy who felt and looked like hell to a guy in pretty good shape, you're gonna want to share that. Bush is like the Congressman who, on improving constituent service with color coded filing, wants a regulation to make the whole government use it since it worked so well for him: going overboard can turn out to be a mess but applying the principles learned from the experience may make for better government, something I'm not so libertarian as to oppose. Bush's church-state interaction is not about state control of nor establishment of religion. It's about making something that worked for him more readily available to others. And if the government is going to be in the business of helping in these spheres at all, our focus needs to be on what works and making it available - not compulsory, but available - to those who would partake.
Should the government be in the business of making good men? Short answer: No. But - and here's the rub - it must provide its citizens the means to exercise their rights, which is what good citizens do in a democracy, lest those rights fall into desuetude. One of the embarrassments of our age is the way that school has been turned into work preparation. I say this as one whose classmates were wont to arrive in classes late or leave early in order to work co-op jobs at McDonalds (!) which ought to be criminal. Do we need to get back to the basics? Damn straight. Uh... what are the basics? What are you saying? They are, of course... The Bible, which rooted man as a special creature, however convolutedly so in tracts like Leviticus; Plato, who did one of the first serious thought experiments about government; Aristotle, for his consideration of how power works; Macchiavelli for the same; Locke, for his theoretical models of self-governance; Montesquieu for laying the blueprint for our version of separation of powers; Jefferson for his elegant summation of Locke in the Declaration; Madison and others for the mighty Constitution they created; Mill for his refinement of notions of liberty; Bastiat for his early vision of what moderate libertarianism would become. Throw in, for good measure, Hobbes, Rousseau, Sade, Marx, to show other routes we might have taken and stimulate debate as to why we didn't. Toss in de Tocqueville, Lincoln, Hamilton and so many others so that those who are willing to learn can more fully grasp why we do things the way we do and those who aren't can be forced to understand that it's more complicated than just what sounds good. This may not make us perfect, but it is the best and only true justification for public education. But if teaching math, psychology, sociology, philosophy and smatterings of chemistry, physics, etc. are necessary to understanding the raw material that led us to conclude that questions about an anthropocentric worldview rendered divine right of kings silly while similarly derived beliefs in man's specialness meant that social Darwinism (Sade, et al) had to be avoided, even as belief in something was necessary to avoid the mess Hume made and the bleak picture Nietzche painted, then these areas will have to be covered. In other words, I, personally, think education ought get back in the business of making renaissance men and renaissance women who can hold government's feet to the fire but elevate and celebrate such projects in self-government as emerge able to withstand their careful scrutiny. But that's my own hobby horse and I'll say no more of it here.
This essay, I fear, becomes more scattered as the hour advances, so I'll be moving to wrap up. But the essential point I would make is this: Cicero and Horowitz both posit extremes and assert the importance of satisfying them. As I've argued above, things are squishier than that. Even I, whom Marcus at least thinks pretty libertarian, have streaks of support for government in me and even a belief or two about places where government can certainly serve us well and maybe even ennoble us. The libertarians who don't are... libertarians. They aren't supporters of the Republican party because voting for it would mean backing a big business/big-religion - big government conspiracy they abhorr. The socio-cons may be more reliably Republican, but those who are likely to walk over gay rights already left when the abortion message got watered down. What the party really needs to be watching is not me - I'm staying - nor the extremes represented by Horowitz and Cicero - the purists in their camps are small in number and too committed to their own agendas to be reliable supporters. The GOP needs to be watching the rock-and-roll Republicans who came of age in the '60s and forward - the people who want to be liberal so their kids will think they're cool, conservative so their kids will be protected and moderate so that if their kids screw up they'll be ok. These are the people who will vote for Bill Clinton if George Bush doesn't understand their concerns but vote for George W. Bush if Al Gore doesn't understand their concerns. They trend Republican because their top issues are a mortgage to pay off, a car loan to manage and the hope that economic liberty will help them with these. They can go Democratic if mom's nursing home is expensive or junior's college education seems out of reach. They support the drug war when it protects their kids and oppose it when it jails them. Apply that yardstick to every other policy of consequence and you've got a snapshot of the new crop of relatively converted Republicans. They are not ideological, but nor are they cynical pragmatists. Rather, they believe in too much. They are not David Brooks' bourgeois bohemians. They are wannabe bourgeois wannabe bohemians. They wanna be cool. They wanna have fun. And they want to know, when they're done with that, that their kids are tucked in safe at night and their businesses ready to hum in the morning.
What's the answer to this? Well. There's this reformed alcoholic who really thinks people shouldn't drink, but can't bring himself to get too harsh when his college age daughters do - even if they're underage. He wants lower taxes so the little guy can afford to stay in business, but he wants the government to start paying for seniors' prescriptions, wants churches to have more money to help out during a downturn - as long as they don't get all preachy about it. His daughters went to public school but he wants others to have the chance to go to private school if they don't live in as good a district. He talks tough on crime but worries about saving souls. His name is George W. Bush. You can argue that his is not a coherent program - and many do - but it is very much in tune with the inner conflicts experienced by all the rock and roll Republicans who want to be cool but aren't so sure their daughters or their daughters' friends should be.
Bush's job right now is to reassure both Cicero and Horowitz that his heart is with them in many ways. Fortunately, it is. With both of them. But the bigger question is whether Cicero and Horowitz are smart enough to understand this, or whether they will get so busy trying to score points that they hand the whole ball of wax to another unapologetic statist like Clinton. As this debate unfolds, Bush sits astride a major political group that doesn't even know it's a political group. If he's to succeed, they never will. They'll just continue to think they're ordinary folks with pretty good family values but that understand you've gotta be tolerant. And that Bush seems to get that, not like them party folk. Bush is doing his best to tame this group so that some of Cicero's values will again be honored, but not so much that Horowitz' shrieking becomes justified. If the distractions of Cicero and Horowitz cause him to fail, he's got a nice ranch in Texas and a couple million bucks to maintain it with in the aftermath. What will blogger Marcus and pundit Horowitz have, though, to show for their efforts?
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