Tag Archives: politics

What ’60s Colleges Did Right

16 Friday Mar 2018

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“The irony is that the supposedly bland, conventional schools and colleges of the 1950s and early 1960s incubated what was perhaps the most radical generation of American citizens since the country’s founding. Young people who were incensed by the denial of voting rights out there, the Vietnam War out there, nuclear proliferation out there, capitalism out there, colonialism out there. The universities of our time instead cultivate students so obsessed with their personal identities and campus pseudo-politics that they have much less interest in, less engagement with, and frankly less knowledge of the great out there. Neither Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who studied Greek) nor Martin Luther King Jr. (who studied Christian theology) nor Angela Davis (who studied Western philosophy) received an identity-based education. And it is difficult to imagine them becoming who they became had they been cursed with one. The fervor of their rebellion demonstrated the degree to which their education had developed in them a feeling of democratic solidarity, which is rare in America today.

Whatever you wish to say about the political wanderings of the sixties generation—and I’ve said a lot—they were, in their own way, patriots. They cared about what happened to their fellow citizens and cared when they felt America’s democratic principles had been violated. Even when the fringes of the student movement adopted a wooden, Marxist rhetoric, it always sounded more like Yankee Doodle Dandy than Wagner.”

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Taken from the ending of Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. I highly recommend Lilla’s short book, a rare example of someone writing, as it were, across the aisle — to try and problem-solve for those he has no direct political allegiance to. Since these kinds of prescriptions aren’t being offered from the left-wing of the liberal coalition now, take your good advice where you can get it.

This is the second-to-last paragraph of the book, and it ends with a continuation of this thought:

… Most [of my generation] remain well to the left of me but we enjoy disagreeing and respect arguments based on evidence. I still think they are unrealistic; they think I don’t see that dreaming is sometimes the most realistic thing one can do. (The older I get the more I think they have a point.) But we shake our heads in unison when we discuss what passes for politics and civic education in our country…

The screenshot: from The Graduate

Teddy on How Private Secrets Cripple Leaders

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

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“Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had walked into these traps our public careers would have ended… A man can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor will clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good service. I have always been fond of Josh Billings’s remark that ‘it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent.’ There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey. He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when his public or his private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He must walk warily and fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, by the way, that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”

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From Part III (“Practical Politics”) of Theodore Roosevelt’s Autobiography.

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Rioting in Understatement

22 Friday Sep 2017

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“The two parties, which are really one party, cannot be put to use. They are the country’s ownership made carnival. Can the united action of individual citizens regain some control over government? I think so. But it won’t be easy, to riot in understatement. Attempts to cut back the war budget — whether the war be against communism or drugs or us — will be fought with great resourcefulness. When challenged with the billions of dollars wasted or stolen from the Pentagon, the establishment politician’s answer is clear: Abortion is against God’s law. He promptly changes the subject, the way a magician does when he catches your attention with one hand while the other picks your pocket…

Our political debate — what little there is — can never speak of the future except in terms of the past. I shall, therefore, present a formula to restore the Republic by moving boldly forward into the past. I wish to invoke the spirit of Henry Clay. Thanks to our educational system, no one knows who he is, but for political purposes he can be first explained, then trotted out as a true America Firster who felt that it was the task of government to make internal improvements, to spend money on education and on the enlargement of the nation’s economic plant… This does not seem to me to be too ambitious a program.”

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Pulled from Gore Vidal’s classic “Notes on Our Patriarchal State,” which is taken from his “State of the Union” speech from 1990 (embedded below). To get the full effect, flash forward to minute twenty-six and listen to this section. The text can be found in his collection Gore Vidal’s State of the Union.

Why Identity Politics Fails

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

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“The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and act in a way that would actually accomplish the things it professes to want. It is mesmerized by symbols: achieving superficial diversity in organizations, retelling history to focus on marginal and often minuscule groups, concocting inoffensive euphemisms to describe social reality, protecting young ears and eyes already accustomed to slasher films from any disturbing encounter with alternative viewpoints. Identity liberalism has ceased being a political project and has morphed into an evangelical one. The difference is this: evangelism is about speaking truth to power. Politics is about seizing power to defend the truth…

If liberals hope ever to recapture America’s imagination and become a dominant force across the country, it will not be enough to beat the Republicans at flattering the vanity of the mythical Joe Sixpack. They must offer a vision of our common destiny based on one thing that all Americans, of every background, actually share. And that is citizenship. We must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals — including ones to benefit particular groups — in terms of principles that everyone can affirm. Ours must become a civic liberalism. […]

Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony. They are not therapy sessions or occasions to obtain recognition. They are not seminars or ‘teaching moments.’ They are not about exposing degenerates and running them out of town. If you want to save America’s soul, consider becoming a minister. If you want to force people to confess their sins and convert, don a white robe and head to the River Jordan. If you are determined to bring the Last Judgment down on the United States of America, become a god. But if you want to win the country back from the right, and bring about lasting change for the people you care about, it’s time to descend from the pulpit.”

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Pulled from Mark Lilla’s short book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, published last month.

In both its tone and substance, I think it’s as useful a Democratic roadmap as I’ve seen since last summer. (For ongoing discussion of the book, including some of its shortcomings, follow my friend Matthew Sitman.)

The Kushner Dilemma

03 Wednesday May 2017

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“I was in a coffee shop a few days after the election and someone I knew from childhood recognized me. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Tell me everything’s going to be okay.’

A lot of us who study politics have the impulse to give an answer to that person that will make her feel better. So we create a story wherein Steve Bannon is the source of all the irregularities and anomalies in the White House, and if only someone nicer, someone like Jared Kushner, would take over, things would be okay.

They’re not going to be okay.

With Jared Kushner you get a different set of problems than you do with Steve Bannon. Obviously he’s way less ideological. He’s not connected to Breitbart. But he doesn’t know anything. And even more than that, the problems of public integrity that have stalked this White House become worse the more power the Kushner family has.

It was the Kushner family that negotiated this $400 million payout from a Chinese state-influenced bank. Although that deal had to be dropped in the face of pressure from Congress, presumably everyday, people in the Kushner family circle are thinking of similar transactions.

And, look, 35-years-old: [he and Ivanka] are not children. That’s half your life on this planet. And they haven’t bothered to learn anything about the roles they now have.

If Jared Kushner were a truly public-spirited person, what he would do is separate himself much more fully from his business interests, and say to the president, ‘Dad, it’s clear you need an A-team here. And what I’d like to do for you is run a staffing process, whereby instead of giving your China portfolio to me, and giving your Middle East portfolio to me, and giving your Reinventing Government portfolio to me, we’ll bring in people who actually have known about these issues before November of last year. And, while we’re at it, let’s get the State Department staffed, too.’ […]

Anyone who has worked in government knows that administrations run through a deputy system. Deputies prepare information that is then handed over to principles. And, a third of the way into the first year of this presidency: no deputies.

Donald Trump may feel like a winner. I’m sure he’s a much richer man than he was on election day. But the rest of us, I think we’re all losers.”

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David Frum, speaking in an interview on Charlie Rose last month.

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The Story of Your Era

11 Saturday Mar 2017

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Questioner: Looking at our political lives today, how do you talk to young people about the future?

Will Self: I think a lot about how the world was when I was in my early 20s, when I was finishing university…

And what strikes me is how much more anxious young people are now than we were, and this despite the fact that when I left university there was major unemployment, we were losing manufacturing jobs hand over fist. Our foreign policy was unstable; we were still living under the shadow of the mushroom cloud and a dispensation of mutually assured destruction. There were legitimate fears about Soviet aggression. A lot of these things you would imagine hit some of the same buttons in some of the same combinations, and yet… and yet… and yet… we weren’t as anxious as a lot of people are now.

And you know what, I think people are right to be more anxious now, oddly. Obviously that’s offered with the benefit of hindsight, but my suspicion is they are right to be more anxious…

I honestly think if I were a young person now I would concentrate, not selfishly on my own life; I think it’s very important in life to have compassion toward others and to do things for other people. But I would not place any expectation or faith in political change. I’m sorry: that’s not the story of your era.

The story of your era is going to need to be stoical. Perform, as the great Zen poet Bashō says, random acts of senseless generosity. Engage with your work. Enjoy the spectacle of life. But I wouldn’t place any great expectations on the idea society or political systems are in some way evolving or progressing, and that if you can just figure out how to get your shoulder to the wheel in the right way, and encourage some other people to do the same, that the whole thing is going to move. I’m sorry, but I really would abandon that idea. I think you’ll have a much happier and productive life, incidentally, and probably end up doing more good.

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Comments adapted from Will Self’s recent interview at his office at Brunel University. I like his answer, but can’t bring myself to agree.

I’m sorry: that’s not the story of your era…

Image courtesy of Pin Drop Studio.

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The Purpose of Bold Political Lies

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Political Philosophy

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hannah-arendt

“The result of this system is that the gullibility of sympathizers makes lies credible to the outside world, while at the same time the graduated cynicism of membership and elite formations eliminates the danger that the Leader will ever be forced by the weight of his own propaganda to make good his own statements and feigned respectability. It has been one of the chief handicaps of the outside world in dealing with totalitarian systems that it ignored this system and therefore trusted that, on one hand, the very enormity of totalitarian lies would be their undoing and that, on the other, it would be possible to take the Leader at his word and force him, regardless of his original intentions, to make it good. The totalitarian system, unfortunately, is foolproof against such normal consequences; its ingeniousness rests precisely on the elimination of that reality which either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to his pretense.

While the membership does not believe statements made for public consumption, it believes all the more fervently the standard clichés… In contrast to the movements’ tactical lies which change literally from day to day, these ideological lies are supposed to be believed like sacred untouchable truths…

[I]ts members’ whole education is aimed at abolishing their capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction. Their superiority consists in their ability immediately to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose. In distinction to the mass membership which, for instance, needs some demonstration of the inferiority of the Jewish race before it can safely be asked to kill Jews, the elite formations understand that the statement, all Jews are inferior, means, all Jews should be killed; they know that when they are told that only Moscow has a subway, the real meaning of the statement is that all subways should be destroyed…”

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Pulled from part three of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

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Image: the-philosophy.com

The Lives and Deaths of Third Parties in America

29 Thursday Dec 2016

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Richard Hofstadter

“[T]hird-party leaders in the United States must look for success in terms different from those that apply to the major parties, for in those terms third parties always fail. No third party has ever won possession of the government or replaced one of the major parties. (Even the Republican Party came into existence as a new major party, created out of sections of the old ones, not as a third party grown to major-party strength.) Third parties have often played an important role in our politics, but it is different in kind from the role of governing parties. Major parties have lived more for patronage than for principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in power, to arrange sufficiently satisfactory compromises of interests to remain there. Minor parties have been attached to some special idea or interest, and they have generally expressed their positions through firm and identifiable programs and principles. Their function has not been to win or govern, but to agitate, educate, generate new ideas, and supply the dynamic element in our political life. When a third party’s demands become popular enough, they are appropriated by one or both of the major parties and the third party disappears. Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.”

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Pulled from chapter three of The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter.

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Foreseeing a President Trump in 1998

05 Monday Dec 2016

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Richard Rorty

“[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion… All the sadism which the academic Left tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

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Excerpted from Richard Rorty’s 1998 book Achieving Our Country.

We Don’t Carry the Burden of Disliking One Another

14 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in Politics, Speeches

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Mitt Romney

“We have very fundamental and sound principles that guide both the president and me. He and I, of course, both feel the pressures and tensions of a close contest. It would be easy to let a healthy competition give way to the personal and the petty. But fortunately we don’t carry the burden of disliking one another.

Barack has had some very fine and gracious moments. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but our 44th president has many gifts, and a beautiful family that would make any man proud.

In our country, you can oppose someone in politics and make a confident case against their policies without any ill will. And that’s how it is for me: there’s more to life than politics. […]

At the Archdiocese of New York, you show this in the work you do, in causes that run deeper than allegiance to party or any contest at the moment. No matter which way the winds are blowing… you answer with calm and willing hearts in service to the poor and care for the sick, in defense of the rights of conscience and in solidarity with the innocent child waiting to be born. You strive to bring God’s love into every life.

I don’t presume to have all your support… and I’m certainly not going ask for it. But you can be certain that in the great causes of compassion that you come together to embrace, I stand proudly with you as an ally and friend.”

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From Mitt Romney’s speech at the famous Al Smith dinner, given around this time four years ago.

So much to like here. Though I didn’t vote for Mitt in the election — and wrote here and there why I decided not to — I admire the guy and, four years later, think he would have made a very fine president. I especially like how much of a gentleman he is — that he consistently brings value to the communities and organizations he’s led while never succumbing to pressure to take the sleazy way out. When a challenge arises, answer with a calm and willing heart.

You can watch the (very funny) 2012 Al Smith dinner below.

Images courtesy of Vice and Wiki

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Mitt Romney and Barack Obama

David McCullough Takes on Donald Trump

18 Monday Jul 2016

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David McCullough

“What has the Republican party come to? That at such an unsettling time as this, with so very much at stake, so many momentous, complex problems to be addressed — and yes, so much that we must and can accomplish — why would we ever choose to entrust our highest office, and our future, to someone so clearly unsuited for the job? Someone who’s never held public office, never served his country in any fashion.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who so admirably served his country his entire career, said there were four key qualities by which we should measure a leader: character, ability, responsibility, and experience.

Donald Trump fails to qualify on all four counts. And it should be noted that Eisenhower put character first. In the words of the ancient Greeks, character is destiny.

So much that Donald Trump spouts is so vulgar and far from the truth and mean-spirited; it is on that question of character especially that he does not measure up. He is unwise. He is plainly unprepared, unqualified, and it often seems, unhinged. How can we possibly put our future in the hands of such a man?

We’re on the whole — let’s not forget — a good country, of good people, with good intentions.

Good, even great, leaders have played decisive roles in our history, time after time. We have believed from the start in worthy achievement, and have set landmark examples for how very much can be accomplished when we work together, infused by positive spirit.

Inspired by Theodore Roosevelt, we built the Panama Canal. Led by President Harry Truman, we created the Marshall Plan. President John F. Kennedy called on us to go to the moon — and we went to the moon! Through leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, we ended the Cold War.

And there is no reason that under the right leadership, we can’t continue on that way.”

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David McCullough’s short video take on Trump, posted to the Facebook page “Historians on Donald Trump.”

Other highlights from McCullough: