Liberty and Society

Welcome friends!

I don’t know how I got on the subject, probably the recent Christmas holiday and the annual rite of posing and gesturing for the good of all mankind, but I was just thinking how liberals tend to feel various social ills are best addressed through purposeful government action and conservatives (of the conscientious sort who actually think about such things) tend to feel these issues are more appropriately addressed through private charity.  A common argument one tends to hear on the conservative side is that the big advantage of their preferred approach is that it’s voluntary.  If one wants to help other people one is free to do so but no one is forced to part with their hard earned cash or let’s just say cash at the behest of some no good do-gooder.  In contrast the government policy approach favored by liberals generally involves the government’s power of taxation and hence ultimately its monopoly on the legal use of force and thus constitutes an affront to freedom and personal liberty.  Superficially it may seem they’re onto something.  Voluntary seems good.  Being forced to do anything seems bad.  But like much of the rest of conservative ideology upon deeper consideration the argument turns out to be a bit too simplistic.  Some other issues going on.  Big issues that get to the core of civilized society and democracy.  Not the sort of things people should really leave unsaid.  Let me explain what I’m talking about.

The first problem I have with the conservative take on this issue is that it seems a little lopsided or unbalanced in some way.  The private charity approach certainly seems consistent with the freedom of potential donors who can decide to give or not give as the mood suits them.  But this increase in freedom relative to the tax and spend approach seems to me counterbalanced by a commensurate decrease in freedom on the part of those on the receiving end.  Under a proper government program to address whatever social problems we’re talking about these people would be legally entitled to whatever it was and would be free to claim what would then be rightfully theirs.  Under a charitable regime they would of course not be entitled to anything in particular.  They would arrive hat in hand begging for alms.  Not really the same freedom-wise I wouldn’t think.  If we’re going to look at the net impact on freedom considering both groups of people I’d have to say I’m just not really sure.  One may think some people don’t really deserve more freedom so the calculation is really beside the point.  That’s fine with me.  We can discuss it.  But in that case let’s not present abstract freedom as an independent objective or consideration.  Let’s just say we’re interested in distributional systems.

Another problem with the private charity approach is that it appears to me a little sneaky or underhanded in some way.  We’ve set up together as a society through our political system our legal and economic institutions or if not set them up in the sense of bringing them into being then at least agreed together to modify them or not and to abide by them and so on.  However, if we’re talking about addressing some perceived social ills the way we’ve things up apparently has left a little something to be desired.  It’s not a big deal.  It’s not unexpected.  Hard to think of everything and to create a system that handles everything.  I suppose no society yet created is perfect and can carry on indefinitely without some remedial work now and then to keep it running more or less smoothly.  My point is simply that when I see people who make out very well indeed in our society accepting and supporting the system to the extent it works to their benefit but balking when it comes time to address the inevitable issues and imperfections associated with that system manifested typically in the suffering or relative want of their fellow citizens it looks to me like people shirking their duty to society.  It’s rather like eating a nice dinner and skipping out on the bill.  It’s fine to say I’ll only pay if I decide to volunteer a little something on the way out but in that case one shouldn’t be too surprised if the restaurant falls into disrepair or even ceases to exist one day.

And of course there is something inherently odd about setting up an economic system based primarily on monetary incentives and self interest and then trying to address social ills using a system that depends on people acting against those incentives at least in the short term.  Under a charitable system arguably good people who express their concern for others in a practical way by which I mean giving people money will lose out relative to those who choose to express a haughty disregard for the welfare of their fellows.  Sounds like a recipe to let problems go unsolved to me.  Sometimes people are willing to do things if we do them together and everyone pitches in but balk when they discover they’ll be doing all the hard lifting while their compatriots sit on the sidelines under very fancy canopies indeed cheering them on.  

A rather more fundamental issue is that I’m not at all convinced taxation really qualifies as any great assault on one’s liberty.  Goes with living in a human society.  Things need doing and it’s not really all going to be done through the magic of the marketplace.  But of course it depends on the form of government we’re talking about doesn’t it?  If we’re talking about monarchism or fascism or what have you then I suppose taxation might be rather arbitrary and arguable an assault on one’s liberty.  This is where the idea of democracy comes in.  We vote on things and then we abide by them whether that’s what we’ve personally voted for or not or in extreme cases we abide by them as much as we’re able within the bounds of our perceived moral duty because, well, that’s just the way society works.  One wouldn’t have a very effective society if everyone does only what they choose to do from one moment to the next.  Some places have tried that approach.  In practice it tends to lead to what I believe is known technically as a dysfunctional hellhole.  And in this context as well I’m struck by the distinctive imbalance inherent in much of conservative ideology.  Although often up in arms over the government’s use of force as it applies to enforcing the tax code conservatives rarely express concerns over the government’s use of force in other contexts such as for example enforcing our system of property rights.

Of course this imbalance really gets to the heart of the whole issue I suppose.  It has nothing to do with freedom or liberty and everything to do with haves and have nots.  Conservatives are enamored of the institutions surrounding the market and or current property arrangements.  They perceive no social ills under such a regime and nor do they care to receive the opinion of their fellow citizens delivered via the democratic political system.  In a sense they’ve become too cool for school.  It leads to that particular form of egotism by which conservatives imagine themselves a law unto themselves or in some cases the beneficiary of laws not made by their fellows but delivered from the cosmos by the forces of nature or helpful deities of one sort or another.  It’s the mindset that leads many conservatives to speak of government beyond that required to express and enforce the market institutions they find so attractive as a great evil with no apparent concern over what form that dark force may take be it democracy or fascism or communism.  Indeed many conservatives tend to use the terms interchangeably.  What they fail to appreciate is that the very system they excoriate as infringing upon their precious liberties is the system we used to set up and maintain the system of property rights and contracts they so adore but that others may find the source of suffering and want and injustice.  It’s a system of thought predicated on egotism and a defective and incomplete anti-social moral philosophy that results in selective perception expressed in peculiarly unbalanced reasoning in which government legitimacy and individual rights and duties appear and disappear like will-o’-the-wisps depending on one’s vantage point.  

We should all fight against conservatism and reaffirm our commitment to society, democracy, and the solving of social ills through purposeful co-ordinated collective action.  It’s time we gave up the ancient deist pipe dream of an invisible hand leading society to morally optimal results with no more effort on our part than assiduous attention to our own selfish wants and desires.  No mysterious providence guides markets to mutually desirable and salutary results.  Markets do what they do.  Some of it good for some.  Possibly even most of it good for most.  However,  under any reasonable system of moral ethics the market will be seen to allow some issues to remain unsolved.  We should recognize those issues and take steps to address them to make our system work for everyone.

What I Liked About Conservatives Of Yore

Welcome friends!

I’ve been so disappointed at the appalling performance to date of our new Republican administration and congress as well as their astonishingly low personal characters and near total absence of civic virtues that I find I’m beginning to develop a really rather pronounced distaste for the American conservatives mostly in the southern and central parts of the nation who installed them in office and who appear to believe they’ve been doing one hell of a good job thus far.  Of course, when I started this blog a number of years ago I mentioned my distaste for conservatives but at that time my dislike was tempered to some degree by what I perceived as the considerable overlap of conservative and liberal values. I considered many conservatives to be basically well meaning people who were perhaps just not thinking things through very carefully or who were possibly susceptible to being purposefully misled by wily rhetoricians and ideologues.  However, after observing the tenor of the social conservation since the advent of President Trump I must say I’m no longer sure I really believe that to be the case.  The conservative in the street now seems to be much more suspicious of democratic government, the free press, and the separation of church and state and much more accepting of authoritarianism and corruption in government than I think I ever really understood  before now.  They seem to also place much less significance on truthfulness, reliability, knowledge, competence, consistency, transparency, civilized discourse, and the basic attributes of what I would consider good personal character than I previously supposed.  To make a long story short the three headed monster of conservatism appears to me considerably more monstrous than formerly.  As a remedy to my rising feelings of hatred and disgust for this very ubiquitous segment of the American population I thought I might take a moment this week to try to remember some of the good things about my rapidly vanishing former foes the well intentioned, principled, and mannered conservatives of my youth... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

The IRS Front in the Conservative War Against Democracy

Welcome friends!

I’m finding tearing myself away from the slowly unfolding catastrophe of the conservative Trump administration is becoming more and more difficult every day.  Have you found that to be the case as well?  It’s hard to take one’s eyes off the papers even for a moment when one doesn’t know what manner of corruption, dishonesty, and destructiveness will manifest from one moment to the next.  Mesmerizing.  I’ve never seen anything like it the whole of my life.  I never imagined in my wildest dreams I ever would.  It’s as though the USA woke up one day and agreed to self destruct.  Nevertheless I’m determined to stick with the intent of this blog and not try to respond to every day to day development or I guess in this case outrage but instead focus on issues with somewhat broader and more lasting implications.  With that in mind I thought this week I’d take a quick look in my folder of issues I’ve long meant to comment upon but have never actually gotten around to and cross one off the list.  This week I decided to take up the American conservative war against the US tax authority the IRS and indeed by extension on democratic government itself.  Huh?  Taxes are bad right?  So why the dig about a war on democracy?  Allow me to explain.

I think by now most people get that conservatives think government should be limited to those activities they find personally useful, basically police, prisons, and national security, and that they consider any other sort of activity socialism, which by a not very clever sort of equivocation they strive to associate with the Stalinist do it my way or I’ll hit you on the head with a lead pipe variety.  They run on this platform constantly and as far as I know have done so for perhaps the last two hundred years here in the USA.  Not always talking about socialism per se but certainly attacking the foundation of the socialist ethos: the idea that other people matter... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

American Heartland Disease

Welcome friends!

Did you catch the story about the good people of the US Midwestern state of Montana electing some conservative thug named Greg Gianforte to the US Congress?  He was in the news recently for physically attacking a reporter who had asked him a question about the Republican Party health care plan and then lying about it until he found it untenable in the face of testimony from witnesses.  (He was apparently relying on some Fox News reporters to back him up but they opted to tell the truth for once suggesting some elements of the organization may have some latent professionalism and commitment to ideals beyond making President Trump and the Republican Party look good.)  The citizens of Montana are of course free to elect any sort of idiot they like to the US Congress and frankly one doesn’t expect much from a state sparsely populated by the most isolated and provincial of rural folk.  Indeed I was about to let it pass without comment as just one of those things but it did get me thinking about something I found mildly interesting: the tendency of many Americans to romanticize these flyover regions of the country by referring to them as the “heartland” of the country.  The phrase of course is a little play on words involving the notion of a heartland as the geographical center of a nation and the notion of the heartland as the portion of a nation exemplifying its true character.  The problem in this instance is that while the first bit may well be true the latter bit is most emphatically not.  As the results of the recent election in Montana so strikingly illustrate the people of the so-called heartland of the USA today exemplify mostly the effects of a sort of rot or cancer of the American character.  These hicks of the heartland appear to have thrown over our cherished ideals of democracy and free speech in favor of the rather more authoritarian small town virtues of bullying and lying.  I’m afraid it’s time to call it like it really is.  The true intellectual and moral heart of the USA is located not in the geographically central farmlands of the Midwest but in the coastal regions and the large cities where most American and in particular most educated and gainfully employed Americans actually live.

One question that occurred to me is where did this fascination with rural small town life even come from? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Muslim Immigration

About time we had some good news right?  Seems our friends in France have managed to beat back the always unpleasant Le Pen clan and reaffirm their commitment not only to all things French as they certainly should but also to Europe and even more expansively the world.  After the UK packed it in and the USA abruptly took leave of its senses and joined the circus I really wondered if the Europeans would follow suit and go on holiday as well.  Thankfully that does not appear to have been the case despite our good frenemies the Russians trying to pull a Trump on them at the last moment.  Got to love the French.  Tougher than they seem sometimes.  Not all brie and a nice bottle of wine that’s for sure.  Anyway, I thought this might be a good excuse to take one more shot at the whole immigration issue as it appears to be a pretty big deal overseas.  Well, here too I suppose but not really the same thing.  Folks in Europe are a lot closer to all the mayhem going on in the Middle East right now, have done a lot more to help the refugees from that benighted region of the world, and have been trying to assimilate people a lot more foreign and sometimes dangerously anti-social than the occasional bad hombre arriving in the USA from our long suffering neighbor to the south.  So let me say a few more words this week about immigration with Muslim immigration as the specific example.

First let me just say this issue I feel has nothing or should have nothing really to do with how one personally feels about the religion of Islam... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Size Matters for Conservative Proto-Fascists

Welcome friends!

Do you ever have the annoying feeling of not being entirely sure you’ve said something you meant to say and indeed thought you probably said?  I’ve been having that feeling recently.  Certain things set me off and I’m thinking no need to bring it up again because I’ve discussed it all before but then I hesitate.  I hope I didn’t accidentally write it the wrong way around or bury it in the middle of some long winded digression or whatever.  I could look it up but I suppose there’s no great harm repeating myself.  With that thought in mind let me just banish one of these demons right now.  It involves one aspect of the multifaceted relationship between contemporary American conservatism and fascism: the tendency of American conservatives to equate what they characterize as big government with fascism.  Just grates on my ears on so many levels.

First of all I find something a little weird about this whole notion of big versus small government.  What are we talking about anyway?  The number of government employees?  The number of laws and regulations?  The complexity of the laws and regulations?  The areas of life affected?  The significance of the effects?  Because different definitions may imply different things... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Immigration And Conservatism Old And New

Welcome friends!

Did you read about President Trump’s new national health care policy?  The one he crowed about so frequently during the campaign?  The terrific plan that does everything Obamacare does but much cheaper?  No?  Not surprising.  No one else has either.  Turns out President Trump never really had any such policy in mind and at least according to one of his aides as reported in the papers recently was never really very interested in health care policy anyway.  Didn’t really need anyone to tell me that.  You may recall a few weeks back the president delivered the memorable gag line, “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”  He apparently just assumed some Republican or other would have a workable plan.  Alas, no.  Paul Ryan and the leadership of the Republican Party, who have spent the better part of the last decade talking about it, couldn’t come up with a politically viable health care policy when the time came to present one.  So what was the practical result of all the conservative grandstanding and speechifying on the unmitigated disaster Obamacare apparently represented and continues to represent to them?  Nothing.  Rather predictably an irate President Trump put down his golf clubs for a few moments to search for some suitable scapegoat and after first trying on the Democratic Party and finding that didn’t really pass the laugh test instead took aim at the stridently ideological and impractical far right of his own party.  As far as the actual issue of health care he petulantly declared his intention to “let Obamacare explode,” which most knowledgeable people feel is unlikely to happen without active sapping.  Hopefully the Democrats and the pitifully small number of moderate Republicans in Congress can fend them off and make any needed changes to the program to ensure it continues to help Americans get the health care they need.  But none of that is really what I wanted to discuss today.  Bam!  That’s what they call a pivot in political circles!  No, what I’ve been really been wanting to say a few syllables about is immigration and in particular illegal immigration in light of the new political landscape ushered in by Mr. Trump and his Trumpkins.  Not only because it’s a big issue right now in both the USA and Europe but also but even more interestingly to me because there seems to be something a little bit odd about how we’ve been discussing it here in the USA anyway.  Substance is always interesting to me but if you read this blog at all you’ll know what really sets me on edge is when people talk funny.  So let’s take that up this week shall we?

Historically American conservatives of the economic variety have supported not just your garden variety controlled immigration that pretty much everyone supports but the much more radical notion of the free movement of labor.  They’ve long been enemies of collectivist thinking in any form including that involving nations, societies, neighborhoods, unions, and so on because they feel the only proper unit of analysis for any reputable theory of social ethics is the individual.   To economic conservatives who people are and where they come from is not meant to matter.  What matters is their role in the economic system.  Owners of capital.  Workers.  CEOs.  Fending off thinking of groups is where all the conservative talk of creeping socialism and democracy run amok and the ostensibly dire need to restrict government and so on comes from.  In this influential wing of American conservatism one’s fellow citizen should be of no more interest to one than any other random potential worker in any other country in the world.  According to their social philosophy based on a sort of dumbed down version of neoclassical economic theory everything is best handled by the free market and the way to facilitate a free market is free trade as far as the outputs of production and the free movement of labor as far as the inputs of production.  The issue they find compelling is not how well the peons of any particular nation are doing but total output.  If the largely mythical perfectly competitive free markets can be achieved and maintained then we needn’t worry about how other people are doing.  They will logically be doing just as well as they ought to be doing.  I say this idea is based on a dumbed down version of neoclassical economic theory because as I’ve explained in many previous posts that theory doesn’t really say that at all.  In its modern form it sidesteps distributional issues entirely and is thus not meant to provide a basis for a complete theory of social ethics and is indeed logically incapable of doing so.  The all important missing bits of economic conservative ideology that explain why we needn’t be concerned with the welfare of other people do not come from economic theory but from some other unspecified source.  If you find out where let me know.  I’ve wondered about that for some time myself.

The other traditional wing of conservatism here in the USA is of course social conservatism, which is a different beast entirely.  Social conservatives as one might suppose are much more attuned to societal issues but rather narrowly focused on social control in the sense of enforcing ethnic and cultural and in particular religious conformity.  They have traditionally spent very little time thinking about economic issues other than to argue we should not rock the boat and should accept whatever distribution falls out of our current system, hence their ability to find common cause with economic conservatives on distributional matters or at least with those economic conservatives who are satisfied with the degree to which our system currently conforms to their free market ideology.  Although economic conservatives tend to do the most talking social conservatives have always been a prominent force in this country.  Despite the overall trajectory of the nation’s history toward increasing diversity we’ve always had a sizable group of people who have resented the arrival not only of new people but new ideas (again given their interests typically religious ideas but really any foreign political, social, and economic ideas).  These people don’t have any particular objection to using government power to coerce other people into toeing the line on the issues they find important.  However, they tend to share economic conservatives’ distrust and fear of democracy because of course democracy can at least potentially be used to express the interests of the very people they find undesirable and of course the constant discussions and negotiations raise the specter than people may adopt new ideas and want to try some things.  They’re much happier talking about bibles and constitutions and unchanging natural laws and basically anything immune from the forces of what they view as misguided human meddling.

And now of course we have yet a third iteration of American conservatism on our hands, President Trump’s so-called “economic nationalism,” which is apparently meant to simultaneously address the distributional beliefs and concomitant adulation of “the free market” of traditional economic conservatives, the social control and ethnic and social homogeneity so beloved of social conservatives, and a new concern: the collective economic interests of the nation as opposed to the economic interests of foreigners.  Yes, we’re basically talking about a version of what they call in Europe or did at one time anyway national socialism but you know American conservatives always have a hard time with the word socialism so of course they call it by a different name.  This sort of thing has long been a mainstay of European conservative politics but is something of a newcomer on these shores.  The social aspect is interesting because one would of course like to consider how it relates to the social aspect of traditional American liberalism and leftism.

In the USA liberalism and leftism has always been predicated on one having and expressing some interest and concern about what is happening to one’s fellow man.  And woman.  And child.  And little furry things.  And fish.  And trees.  And … whoa, let’s not get carried away.  I’m just saying entities other than oneself.  I suppose that must be the distinguishing feature of that end of the political spectrum in this country.  The belief that although individual rights and so on are very important other people are also important.  Society matters.  One’s nation matters.  One’s fellow workers matter.  When one develops this sort of mindset one perceives a whole slew of problems that remain largely invisible to economic conservatives such as how we as a society should address issues involving other people in our society struggling along some dimension or other such as poverty, unemployment, underemployment, sickness, being treated unfairly in terms of economic outcomes, and so on and so forth.

The notion that one should be concerned about other people and society in general is course as the name suggests the basis of socialism broadly conceived.  Theoretically the issue of being concerned about society is different from the issue of supporting or not supporting democracy.  That is to say one can have democratic socialism or anti-democratic socialism, which we typically call communism in this country.  American leftism has always been predominantly focused on the democratic sort because democracy is sort of a big deal in this country.  It’s our thing.  It’s what we do.  If we’re going to do leftist style socialism it’s going to be democratic socialism.  As I’ve pointed out before historically some leftists primarily abroad famously lost sight of the democratic part of the equation.  In particular, the old time communists used to rail against what they called bourgeois political democracy because they felt it was or could be or would inevitably be captured and manipulated by the wealthy classes.  Here in American even leftists who shared their assessment of the shortcomings and weaknesses of democracy in the face of concentrated economic power have opted to try to fix democracy and make it more robust rather than go the other direction and write it off as a hopeless red herring.

Conservative economic nationalism clearly has many similarities to the national socialism of the bad old days of early twentieth century Germany.  However, one presumes or hopes anyway most American conservatives, like most American liberals, would draw the line at actually jettisoning democracy entirely.  In our context what these conservatives tend to talk about is more like neutering democracy.  Limiting it.  Shrinking it.  Yes, the very sort of thing traditional economic conservatives in this country have long recommended.

Having finally and rather laboriously set the stage let’s think a bit about immigration in the context of this new sort of conservative economic nationalism / national socialism and old time traditional liberal or leftist democratic socialism.  The first point of interest here is that as I’ve just pointed out traditional economic conservatives have long been the proponents of open borders and the free movement of labor in contrast to liberals and leftists who wanted controlled immigration because they were concerned about the welfare of those already in their society or system.  Given this background it’s ironic the new breed of economic nationalist conservatives have apparently been able to turn around and smear liberals and leftists with the claim they support uncontrolled immigration and have no concern for their economically struggling fellow citizens.  What seems to have happened is the Democratic Party, the home of whatever liberal and leftist thought there is in the USA along with a great deal that isn’t particularly liberal or leftist, was pulled so far in the direction of economic conservatism under the banner of so-called “neoliberalism" they vacated an intellectual space that was then claimed by conservative economic nationalists.  Awkward as they say.

The second point is there is quite a bit of variation in how conservatives view immigration and in particular illegal immigration.  Economic conservatives are or should be according to their stated philosophy all in favor of immigration and honestly shouldn’t be excessively bothered by even the illegal variety.  It should all help to make labor markets more “efficient” as economists use the word.  Social conservatives on the other hand tend to be pretty suspicious of immigration of any sort including even the controlled legal variety and the issue of illegal immigration is no different in type but kicked up a notch in terms of the threat to social homogeneity and social control.  Conservative economic nationalists are particularly exercised over illegal immigration as it involves foreigners infringing upon our territory so to speak.  One suspects they are probably pretty suspicious of even the legal variety as well although unlike social conservatives they would presumably be sensitive to arguments establishing economic benefits or at least the absence of harm to current residents.  Just to complete the list, most liberals and leftists are probably comfortable with controlled immigration because they recognize the potential benefits and are not particularly challenged by a certain degree of social and cultural diversity.  By certain degree I am of course referring to the point I’ve made in many other posts that there is some minimum of values, meta-values if you will, that we all really need to support in order to live together peacefully.  However, like the conservative economic nationalists liberals would be concerned that legal immigration not undermine the situation of current residents.  We all belong to human society but it’s a lot easier to address issues if one shares a political and legal framework for doing so.  Like all the other groups they oppose illegal immigration but their views are moderated by the understanding it’s a difficult and potentially very expensive nut to crack and there may be some humanitarian issues involved.

That takes us to our third and final point that although no one in the country aside from perhaps some very strident economic conservatives has ever really supported uncontrolled immigration we do clearly have some disagreement in this country about the significance of the problem and the feasibility and advisability of different approaches to dealing with it.  Many social conservatives and now economic nationalist conservatives clearly consider it a very important issue perhaps even rising to the level of an existential crisis and are willing to pour money into such noteworthy projects as a wall across the southern border of the USA.  Liberals and leftists see illegal immigration as a problem we need to address in some way but tend to not see the problem in quite as dire terms.  As a typical liberal in many respects I can’t help but wonder about the likely efficacy of a wall and I have some concerns about the cost of constructing and maintaining such an object.  Indeed, I wonder whether a problem of this sort can really be solved without dealing with the underlying economic and security issues that drive illegal movement across the border.  And of course I see a humanitarian component to the problem as well at least in terms of those attempting to enter the country illegally due to extreme poverty or violence.  Again, broadly speaking we all belong to the society of humans.  Conservative economic nationalists of course appear to see no such difficulties.  Indeed the tribalism and nationalism of this form of conservative socialism may be considered a hallmark of the type.  In the same sense traditional economic conservatism in the US considers that one should treat the welfare of other citizens of the USA as irrelevant the new economic nationalist conservatism in the USA draws a firm distinction between those in the USA, whose welfare is granted significance under that variant of conservatism, and those outside the USA, whose welfare is treated as irrelevant.  The willingness to turn one’s back on someone is a notable characteristic of all forms of American conservatism although the identity of the person or persons to be cut loose clearly varies between the different strands.  Economic conservatives would prefer to cut loose everyone.  Social conservatives would prefer to cut loose ethnic or cultural minorities.  National socialist conservatives would prefer to cut loose foreigners and especially their shock troops illegal immigrants.

We should fight for the sensible and humane liberal and leftist notion of democratic socialism informed by respect for a proper sphere of personal liberty.  We should look after our people but also give a thought to what helps others as well not only to discharge our duties to our fellow humans but because when other countries do well we’re more likely to do well ourselves.  We should reject the dark tribalistic greed and power based winner take all zero sum game notion of a nation at virtual economic war with other nations and at economic, social, and cultural war with the imagined enemy within advocated by social conservatives and economic nationalists as well as the even more corrosive and dystopian every person for himself or herself philosophy of the economic conservatives.  The three headed monster of conservatism is on the prowl and we’re all the prey.  Let’s fight it with all our humanity and reason!

The Topsy-Turvy World of American Conservatism

Welcome friends!

I have to say conservatism here in the USA is pretty funny sometimes.  It’s so outrageously incoherent and idiotic one supposes no conservative could possibly expect anyone to take him or her literally or even seriously and yet one can never be entirely sure.  Why do they say the things they say?  Are they stupid?  Crazy?  Crafty like a fox?  After a lifetime of admittedly rather casual research I still don’t know.  What got me thinking about this issue yet again was some statements Dan Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, delivered this year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  In a move reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Night of the Long Knives albeit without the knives Mr. Schneider dramatically repudiated what has become known as the “alt-right” segment of the American conservative movement and ejected one of their main spokespeople who had apparently previously been attending CPAC events without incident for some time.  Don’t get me wrong.  Seems a sensible enough public relations move now these alt-right groups have become a more visible presence in our political and cultural life.  You may recall some of these people were in the news shortly after the recent presidential election celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory at a restaurant in our nation’s capital.  On that occasion the leader I mentioned earlier in the context of being ejected from this year’s CPAC had railed against Jews, quoted Nazi propaganda (in the original German mind you), explained his belief that America “belonged” to “white” people (or in his own crazy talk version the “children of the sun” apparently not fully comprehending the genetic mechanisms historically giving rise to different skin tones), and called out the following noteworthy slogans: Hail Trump!  Hail our people!  Hail victory!  His audience enthusiastically shouted these slogans back and several over excited attendees apparently gave the old Nazi stiff arm salute.  Got the picture?  To state the obvious I’m perfectly fine with mainstream American conservatives finally cutting these people loose.  Indeed, one can’t help but wonder what took them so damned long.  But then again a little later CPAC attendees enthusiastically endorsed as a true exemplar of bona fide conservatism the man the alt-right views as championing their extremist ideals: President Donald Trump.  For his part, President Trump informed the group, “you finally have a president,” and called his victory “a win for conservative values.”  But that’s just the sort of self serving hypocrisy one expects from American conservatives.  That’s not really what I wanted to address here.  No, the most notable element of the whole affair for me and the bit I’d really like to address in this post was Mr. Schneider’s fanciful denunciation of the alt-right segment of the American conservative movement as a “left-wing fascist group.”

I feel I just addressed the close association between American conservatism and fascism the other day but since conservatives insist upon bringing it up I suppose I might as well take another shot at it... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Against Natural Rights Conservatism

Welcome friends!

Much has been made recently of the new sort of American “conservatism” exemplified by President Trump and many of his followers and how this sort of conservatism is really more along the lines of traditional European right wing populist nationalism than the traditional anti-democratic rich people loving Christianity touting conservatism we’ve all come to know and love or not as the case may be these past several decades here in the USA.  The relationship between these two species of “conservative” is not by any means clear and it’s an open question whether their shared hatred of liberalism and leftism will be enough to keep them together as a unified political force.  If you read the papers I’m sure you’ve noticed the many awkward collisions between these two groups in which a proponent of one or the other form of conservatism is stridently blowing his or her trumpet only to discover that either President Trump has argued just the opposite or the traditional conservative intellectual elite has argued just the opposite.  In the off chance they never manage to work things out and the non-populist traditional conservatives go the way of the dinosaur I thought I’d take this opportunity to express again my opposition to their agenda.  I assume I’ll have plenty of opportunity to explain my opposition to the new sort of right wing nationalist conservatism, which anyway seems much the simpler task of the two.

What got me thinking of writing something along these lines was a couple of little articles I ran across recently by George Will, a traditional old time political conservative if ever there was one, on natural law or natural rights based political conservatism one presumes for the benefit of the new breed of conservative who may not be entirely clear on the subject.  Liberals of course have heard it all before ad nauseam but anyway it’s always fun to go back to fundamentals and think about where liberals and conservatives really parted ways. 

I had some difficulty thinking how the type of conservatism Mr. Will represents relates to the types of conservatism I’m more familiar with myself.  If you read this blog at all you’ll know I’ve long divided traditional American conservatism into two basic categories corresponding to the two heads of the two headed monster of conservatism I mention so frequently: economic conservatism and social conservatism.  I’ve previously explained my belief that economic conservatives are all about the virtues of free markets and how unregulated markets can supposedly cure all our ills if only we don’t interfere with them, which in practice fits in quite nicely with the anti-democratic sensibilities of certain members of the upper classes because the interfering in question necessarily emanates from our democratic government and the people most likely to actually believe unfettered markets might solve all their problems tend to be rich people.  Social conservatives are generally all about religion or their particular religion anyway and how the rest of us clueless sinners can be brought under its dominion.  I remember in my youth people used the term conservatism to also refer to various other right wing types such as racists, nativists, nationalists, and so on but over time I must admit I began to feel they represented their own distinct category of craziness rather than mainstream conservatism but I guess that’s now an open question we’ll have to work out over time.  My immediate point is the sort of natural rights political conservatism Mr. Will laid out in the articles I read is something else yet again and something that upon reflection I’ve encountered often enough in the relatively more serious regions of conservative thought.  I suppose one could think of this as a third sort of conservatism, perhaps political conservatism, in which case I suppose my two headed monster of conservatism will have mutated into an even more fearsome three headed monster: economic, social, and political.  If one adds right wing nationalism, racism, nativism, and so on to the conservative category I guess the three heads would become four but as I said I’m not entirely sure about that yet.  Can’t decide if these people are faux conservatives as some claim or as genuinely and legitimately conservative in their own way as any other sort of conservative.  They do seem to have some affinities with one another don’t they?  And they’ve been around a long time and conventionally been called conservative.  Let’s just say four heads for now.  I suppose that would explain why we liberals have such a hard time disposing of the beast wouldn’t it?  We’re busy grappling with two heads only to find two other heads slithering through the grass to bite us in the rear.  Doing battle with conservatives in the USA is like playing Whack a Mole at the county fair.  They just keep popping up all over the place.

Of course I suspect some conservatives such as perhaps Mr. Will himself for example may want to argue the various branches of conservatism are all based in some way on the political conservatism he espoused in the articles in question.  Seems a rather dubious contention to me but having never had much interest in trying to connect the dots that way I suppose it may be feasible.  In that case I guess instead of four heads we’d have just one really big and really ugly head.  Hmm.  Maybe I’ll take up that possibility one day.  For now I’m seeing four distinct heads.  Anyway, this time out I’d like to take a whack at Mr. Will’s natural rights based political conservatism.  Big topic of course and hardly one I’ll be able to dispose of adequately in a funny little blog post but maybe I can give some preliminary thoughts on the subject.

To make sense of this idea of “natural rights” one must I think take up the concept of “natural law.”  Back in the days of powdered wigs, manor houses, and tobacco planting slaves when people took this sort of thing seriously it seems quite likely social thinkers of the day had in mind the sort of laws natural scientists were then first starting to identify in the physical world, gravity and so on, imagining similar natural laws at work in human society based on the essential properties and characteristics of the human animal.  Many of these gentlemen philosophers were steeped in what we would now consider the quaint and rather Panglossian tradition according to which the good lord created the world and the laws that govern it for the benefit of mankind so natural laws were considered at once immutable laws of nature but also laws that would be beneficial to follow even if they were not so immutable as all that.  This allowed the natural law tradition to continue even after it became rather obvious there were no immutable laws governing the structure of human societies of the same sort governing the physical world.  Natural laws remained laws only in the sense failing to follow them would surely lead society inevitably to fall to pieces.  From this followed the conviction one could identify the natural laws governing human society scientifically and empirically by investigating the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful societies.  The characteristics common to the former and lacking in the latter must comprise the natural laws in question.

The problem of course and the reason this sort of thing isn’t really taken very seriously by serious people now is it’s just very difficult to identify what these natural laws might be.  History has seen all kinds of human societies with all manner of different combinations of characteristics and one can imagine a great many more that might seem viable to one degree or another.  In addition, the question of what defines a successful society is by no means an easy one in part because it would seem to involve some thorny ethical issues.  We’ve seen human societies last hundreds or even thousands of years only to eventually fail.  Were they successful societies?  We’ve seen shorter lived societies in which people were arguably freer or happier or whatever than in some more long lived societies.  Does it matter how the people living in those societies fared or how they thought about their societies?  Were they successful or not?  It’s just not a very easy nut to crack.

Based on these types of considerations my first question for anyone espousing a natural law or natural rights outlook is to tell me which laws and rights he or she considers natural so I know what we’re talking about.  Leaving everything in the abstract just isn’t going to cut it for me.  If we’re ostensibly identifying these laws based on empirical evidence of successful societies we need to get specific so we can properly investigate them.  Similarly if the argument hinges on the characteristics of successful societies we need to discuss how we intend to define success.  The kind of so-called natural right I’m familiar with, such as the famous natural right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” one finds in the US Declaration of Independence, is just too vague to do much for me.  Life seems like it should be a sure bet but here in the USA at least we execute people if they’ve committed certain sorts of heinous crimes.  And we sometimes don’t follow through on policies we know will save lives.  We have poor people, hungry people, people without adequate medical care, people living in unsafe neighborhoods, people with guns, and so on.  Not exactly sure how we’re implementing the “natural right” to life although I suppose we don’t have government employees walking down the street shooting people at random so I suppose that should count for something.  Liberty and happiness sound pretty good as well but you know the funny thing about them is they don’t say anything about how to resolve the conflicts that arise when people want different things.  One person may be happy hitting another person on the head with a rock and may feel his or her natural right to liberty and happiness allows him or her to do that but of course his or her victim may feel happier when not being hit on the rock and may cherish his or her liberty to walk down the street unmolested by rock wielding miscreants.  Yes, I suppose I’m being a little facetious right now but I’m sure you get my point.  If we’re going to seriously entertain the suggestion there are certain laws or rights we must maintain because all successful societies follow those laws and express those rights then we need to get pretty specific about what the heck we’re talking about.

The basic idea of a natural right is it’s something so essential to human society it makes sense to remove it from the realm of normal democratic decision making and put it in a very special Do Not Touch Under Any Circumstances box.  This is a big deal because democratic decision making has certain advantages most notably its results are subject to rational consideration and re-evaluation and it ensures results approved by at least the majority of voters.  Taking issues out of that context and putting them in an inaccessible special box is a risky proposition under the most favorable of conditions and deciding natural laws and natural rights using the combined empirical and normative considerations I mentioned earlier does not sound to me like the most favorable conditions.  Who decides what’s in the box and what’s so special about those people?  If someone were to do some additional research and find for example a successful society that did not follow those laws or exhibit those rights how would we acknowledge that result and take things out of the box?  Who would judge the scientific case for certain issues being in or out of the box?  Who would be responsible for actually putting things in and taking things out?  What if someone wished to question the underlying definition of a successful society?  Would that be open for consideration?  If not who decided that and what makes those people so special?  It’s just not clear to me at all how this would work.

Unfortunately Mr. Will was hardly interested in getting into specifics on these issues at least in the articles I read.  He suggested the relevant natural rights are listed in the Declaration of Independence and opined we should consider anything not listed to also fall under the rubric of natural rights unless a compelling case could be made it be brought under democratic decision making.  He then went on to suggest that in order for the US courts to enforce these amorphous natural rights we should assign the Declaration of Independence the same legal standing as the US Constitution.  Really to me it all sounds such a load of rubbish I can barely stand it.  Saying everything is a natural right unless we have a compelling case to not enforce that right isn’t really saying much at all is it?  In addition to the vagueness and ambiguity inherent in the concept of natural rights we’re now adding the vagueness and ambiguity of the compelling needs that would justify circumventing them.  Who would decide that?  Is that a judicial issue?  Is he imaging the Supreme Court saying they don’t think properly enacted laws are legitimate because they go against “natural rights” and they don’t see a compelling need to allow those rights to be abridged in that particular case?  That’s just hogwash.  How much power do we want give the eight or nine judges for life anyway?  That’s not even really a democracy at that point.  Now the US Constitution I get.  We have various articles we can all read and discuss and we have a mechanism to change them if that’s what we have a mind to do.  It makes sense.  Trying to give the same status to the Declaration of Independence just doesn’t work.  It’s too vague.  And what’s the mechanism for changing the wording of the Declaration of Independence?

The US constitution is the document that lays out the basis of our American system of government.  The Declaration of Independence is a public relations exercise.  The fact of the matter is that back in colonial days the American colonies split from the basically democratic Great Britain because they thought they weren’t getting the attention and clout and favorable economic terms they deserved.  They had to say something.  They couldn’t just say you’re making decisions we don’t like so we’re leaving.  The way they choose to package their move to make it a little more presentable was to postulate natural laws and natural rights that were ostensibly being trampled upon by the British government.  Of course once we set up shop for ourselves our system of government turned out not so very different from the British system.  Weird isn’t it?  Not really.  There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the British system at that time.  We just didn’t find it to our advantage to remain under that system.  Things change.  I get it.  What bothers me is not that the old colonists got on their soapbox but that some modern conservatives would take everything they said so seriously and literally centuries later.

Of course conservatives are not the only people who like to talk about a higher law that ostensibly takes precedence over the flawed decision making of human governments.  Some religious people are famous for it.  It’s one reason one supposes the Middle East may never come to grips with democracy.  Pretty hard to see how it would work if everyone believes a higher law pervades and governs every aspect of their lives.  When they see democracy at work it just pisses them off.  How dare the hoi polloi challenge natural law?  The natural rights branch of American political conservatism is very much in the same place intellectually.  They also hate and fear democracy.  That’s why the closest analog in the USA to the religion based extremist violence and terrorism one finds in the Middle East is the political based extremist violence of certain fringe conservative groups.  They speak the same anti-social language of disrespect and disdain for democratic government and of being above the rule of law.  I suspect the main difference is while anti-democratic religious thought might be based on a conviction one has a moral duty to follow the dictates of supernatural entities in order to help all mankind anti-democratic conservative natural rights thought seems based on a rather more prosaic mix of greed and egotism.  I don’t need no stinking laws.  You can’t tell me what to do.  I’m not paying taxes.  Keep your hand off my stack Jack.  Again perhaps there is some way to relate such sentiments to helping all mankind via some obscure argument involving the various other strands of conservative thought but honestly it’s just not very clear to me how that would work at all.

Of course I understand the need to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.  That’s why we have a constitution and a Supreme Court.  And I certainly agree we should all have some internal limits when it comes to accepting the legitimacy of democratic government.  If Congress were to pass a law that I shoot my neighbor and feast on his or her brains they’re going to have a fight on their hands because I just don’t think that’s really within their purview to demand.  The issue is where we draw the line.  As a liberal my tendency is to want to give democracy as much room to operate as I can tolerably and ethically endure.  If we’re at cross purposes I just feel it’s usually a lot better for us all to sit down and talk about it and vote on it and then talk some more and vote on it again and so on and so forth.  In contrast some conservatives seem intent on limiting democracy to the smallest scope possible.  Just about everything appears to them an unendurable encroachment on their personal liberty and an affront to their dignity as an individual.  They seem blind to the issues that inevitably arise if everyone thinks that way.  It’s what gives so much of conservative thought its weirdly egocentric and selfish quality.

We liberals need to fight conservatism in all its forms if we’re to continue to help the human race reach its full potential of reason and social justice.  And by fight I mean argue vociferously and incessantly against in a manner consistent with our traditional American values of democracy and free speech.  We must fight the traditional natural rights anti-democratic political conservatism of people like Mr. Will.  We must fight the nationalistic, nativist, and possibly racist conservatism of people like Mr. Trump.  We must fight the market worshipping elitist anti-democratic conservatism of economic conservatives.  We must fight the religion based anti-democratic conservatism of social conservatives.  We must fight all four heads of the four headed monster of modern conservatism.  Don’t be discouraged.  Our opponents are numerous and dangerous and wily to be sure but we have on our side the light of human reason, truth, and the relentless force of the human will to create a better society.  We may lose some battles to be sure but it’s hard to see how we could ever lose the war.

American Conservatism and Nazism: The Economic Dimension

Welcome friends!

I suppose you may have noticed the flurry of articles comparing the political movement of our president-elect Donald Trump and his conservative Republican Party to that of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party so many years ago in early twentieth-century Germany?  I suspect it’s probably rather difficult to avoid noticing certain similarities.  Of course conservatives themselves have been preemptively calling their political opponents fascists and Nazis for some time now so I suspect some people must assume it’s all a bit of tit for tat but I really don’t think so.  I thought this time out I’d discuss yet another point of similarity this time involving economic ideas.

If you’re interested in history at all you may recall the little mustachioed monster of fame originally rose to power in Germany the conventional democratic way.  Yes, like vampires of film he only managed to wreak his havoc after having been duly invited in.  Of course in his case the havoc didn’t literally involve sucking blood but rather dismantling the democratic institutions of the nation and going on to murder millions of his countrymen and various other people besides.  By all accounts the initial impetus for his rise was a rather severe economic depression and the inevitable social divisions and in particular racial divisions the economic meltdown and social instability dredged up from the darkness of ages past.

In this context I think it’s important to realize one of the great and abiding mysteries for economic conservatives everywhere is why they don’t always do as well as they feel they ought to do under free markets.  It’s not much of a mystery or issue for liberals and leftists who believe markets don’t always perform that well anyway, which is to say markets can break down and exhibit instability, many types of markets have undesirable characteristics and results (monopolies, monopsonies, oligopolies, oligopsonies), certain common conditions render even gold-standard perfectly competitive markets problematic (externalities, information and other power asymmetries), and markets of any description do not necessarily do a very good job distributing goods and services to the people one might think should have them under any particular theory of social justice.  No, the problem for liberals and leftists is the relatively straightforward although obviously still quite daunting issue of how to fix the problems with markets to make things turn out better.

Conservatives are in a different mental place altogether.  They accept the free market as a panacea for all the material and distributional issues a society may face so if problems remain despite the presence of an apparently free market that’s really a rather remarkable state of affairs.  The primary way conservatives have historically attempted to explain this great mystery is that yes, market systems are inherently flawless and fantastic and so on, but someone is “rigging” the market behind the scenes as it were to make it not work out right.  Sabotage or I suppose as conservatives might say sabatoogie.  For Hitler and the Nazis the shadowy culprit was international Jewry.  One can imagine this wasn’t the most difficult sell in the world at that time and place given the rather obvious otherness of Jewish people in the context of self-adoring European nationalists and racists, the troubled history of Jewish people in Europe since the Middle Ages, and more prosaically the fact some Jewish people had managed to do pretty well for themselves under the prevailing market system.  Make no mistake about it.  Although the Nazis fashioned themselves “socialists” and talked a lot about collectives in certain cultural and military contexts when it came to economic matters they were pretty much conventional economic conservatives.  They didn’t challenge the economic elite of the nation and in return the economic elite of the nation didn’t challenge them.  They were all about keeping labor in line and leftist labor agitators out.  Their goal was an unholy merging of big business, (undemocratic) government, and the military machine.  Hitler won the support of most of the upper classes in the Germany of the day because he basically represented a potential money making opportunity for them.  Obviously it didn’t end too well.  Can’t do much with smoking rubble and a big pile of corpses.  But by the time they figured out which way the wind was blowing there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it.

Here in the USA we have a roughly similar sort of dynamic going on right now.  Conservatives have been talking up the magic of the marketplace as they have been these past two centuries or so but as was the case in Germany in the early twentieth century some workers just aren’t doing all that well financially.  Liberals are trying to explain why that might be the case in terms of technological change and the rise of more effective international competition and more generally just trying to get people to think realistically about the distributional issues associated with market systems but of course conservatives aren’t having it.  They’re too busy looking for the scoundrels who have been rigging the markets to make them not function as they should.  They know it can’t be the economic elite or captains of industry because under conservative philosophy those are the people responsible for all good things in the world and the most deserving of our respect.  It must be someone else.  You can tell they have something like this on their minds because they’re always talking about taking the country back from someone.  But who?  And how did they get hold of the country in the first place?

I suppose a few American conservatives accept the traditional antisemitic line endorsed by the Nazis but not very many.  We just don’t have the history for that sort of thing to really take root.  We didn’t have medieval pogroms or Christian crusades.  We have lots of immigrants from all over the place and always have had.  We like to talk about religious freedom.  Some nativist groups have gotten on that wagon over the years including the neo-Nazis and KKK but it’s a bit of a hard sell for the man in the street.  No, in an American context the much more tempting and satisfying scapegoats are the so-called “black” people, the descendants of the slaves the old-timers kidnapped and brought over to work in their fields and who did a lot to build the country into what it is today.  That despicable but surprisingly long-lasting labor and social arrangement generated a type of social cancer that has proven quite difficult to eradicate or sometimes simply to contain: racism.  According to this theme markets are not working properly because our darker hued compatriots and possibly their illegal immigrant allies (and misguided liberals of course) have captured the government and are using it to wreck markets and funnel resources to the undeserving.  As I’ve noted before the story doesn’t entirely make sense to me according to the available facts because poor “black” people have been doing just as badly as poor “white” people and I think even a little worse and most illegal immigrants are struggling economically as well.  But I suppose the theory is that even though they’re trying to wreck markets and funnel resources to themselves they must not be very good at it because all they’ve managed to do in practice is wreck markets.  So in the eyes of conservatives the solution to our problems is to take the political system back from the people who have captured it, “black” people and their foreign allies, and put it back under the control of people who understand how the market is meant to work and will presumably not mess with it: rich old “white” people.  They would like to find a permanent solution and are forever thinking of ways to limit and shrink democratic government and correspondingly expand the power of the autocratic economic elite but they can only do so much at one time.

Of course, one must admit our conservatives are not nearly as bad as their historical counterparts.  No one has suggested carting anyone off to death camps in the countryside.  Not yet anyway.  I would find that reassuring were it not for the fact we’re not really comparing apples to apples.  Germany in the era of the Nazis went from the social turmoil of a lost war through an epic economic depression to the upheaval of total war.  One supposes these conditions must have had some influence on the complete moral meltdown we all remember today.  Here in the USA we’re having it relatively easy right now.  We have some economic problems that are particularly acute in some areas of the country but overall we’re not doing so badly.  We have some ongoing military conflicts but not really anything beyond what is more or less normal for us these days.  We’re basically on a pretty even keel right now and yet the person the American public chose as their president was Donald Trump. One can’t help but wonder if Germany in the 1930s had been doing as well as we are today would Hitler and his party of dimwitted goons have gotten anywhere near the reins of government.  Or would they have spent their lives railing against the system in some Bavarian beer hall?  Or flip it around.  Let’s say Trump’s economic incompetence and anti-regulatory zeal unleashes a major 1930s style depression.  People in the so-called “heartland” are out of work.  They’re going hungry.  They’re fearful for the future.  What will their philosophy suggest was the cause of the calamity and what do you suppose they will see as the solution?  Or let’s say a major war breaks out.  I mean a big one.  Nuclear.  Biological.  It’s us against them and our backs are against the wall.  But who is us anyway?  Does it include the people conservatives formerly suspected of attempting to steal the country from them?  Will we need to come up with a final solution to the enemy within?

Let’s not let our arrogance get the better of us here.  We’re not immune to the forces that blighted Germany in the not so distant past.  History can repeat itself and will unless we fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn’t.  All pepped up and ready to argue with all your might against the ignorant and destructive forces Mr. Trump has ridden to political power and clearly plans to nourish and encourage the next four years?  Ready to stand up for our American way of life and our shared values of democracy, reason, kindness, and humanity?  Good.  Let’s meet the new year head on and fight the noble fight together.