A Conservative Cult?
Joe Carter responds to my post on Hayek and Health Care and owns it like Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails. The only minor disagreement I have with Joe is the notion that the cult of personality on the Right is “becoming the mirror image of the political Left” – a handful of die-hard Obama-ites aside, the cult of personality on the Right now is far, far more rigid than anything I’ve seen in my 31 years on the Left. Beyond that, Joe says better than I ever could a whole bunch of things that I’ve been trying to say for a long while. Especially this:
This lack of reflection about how foundational views mesh is one of the most significant failings of the modern right. During the Cold War-era people who held incompatible views—such as libertarianism and social conservatism—embraced a limited form of “fusionism” in order to provide a united front against a common enemy—communism.
Today, the common enemy is liberalism and the fusionism occurs not between disparate groups but within an individual. People who would laugh at the absurdity of a “Christian Muslim” seem not to recognize the similar incongruity between being a follower of Christ and an acolyte of Ayn Rand.
UPDATE: See also Steven Hayward in the Washington Post. Hayward covers almost exactly the same ground as Joe, although I think Joe’s piece is better-written.
I think the part where he discusses the cult of personality is also wrong in a different way. He compares the situation on the left to the situation on the right, indicating that one cannot question Obama without being excised from the movement. But of course that’s not even slightly true. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts the place of people like Russ Feingold or Glenn Greenwald in the liberal diaspora, despite the fact that they often find themselves standing in opposition to Obama.
I think he is generally right about the way the left tends to gloss over some of its more insane elements, but I think he and I may not always agree about what constitutes a nutcase on the left (i.e., Chomsky says nutty stuff sometimes, but he also tends to be correct far more often than the Washington Post editorial page, so I’m not that sure I’d want to disown him).Report
Indeed. I mean, come on, does anyone really think Paul Krugman’s reputation on the left has suffered from attacking Obama?Report
I don’t know, Mark, on balance, I’d have to go with NIN’s version of ‘Hurt’. Cash’s arrangement eschews the discordant tension of the original, and the lack of dynamics doesn’t give it the same emotional heft that we get from the swells and retreats from NIN.
Of course, Cash seems much closer to death than does Trent Reznor, which adds to the weight of his interpretation. And, in general, a debate about Cash v. NIN should, more often than not, fall in Johnny’s favour.Report
Fair enough – the original is certainly a fantastic song to begin with. But I have a hard time hearing the original anymore without wanting to hear the Johnny Cash version, although I can do the opposite. Still, I probably could have found a more appropriate analogy if I had thought about it some more. (Hendrix doing Dylan?)Report
How about Luther Wright and The Wrongs doing Pink Floyd… or is that too obscurely Canadian?Report
People who would laugh at the absurdity of a “Christian Muslim” seem not to recognize the similar incongruity between being a follower of Christ and an acolyte of Ayn Rand.
[Applause.] Objectivism is the polar opposite of Christianity. As is nationalist militarism, in a different way. Which pretty much covers most of the current-day right wing.Report