I disagree to some extent with Haidt's characterization (and from the liberal end of the social science's, with Lakoff's as well), but the point they both make, that we're coming from entirely different moral and even epistemic perspectives, is definitely an important one.
Haidt is a social psychologist, and has done some really interesting research, but like most social psychologists, his theorizing goes way, way beyond his data. I used to jokingly call social psychology E! Psychology. Haidt, though he does interesting research, in his writings for the general public tends to justify that label.
Let me say more about this. What the recent conservative guest posters are clearly doing is trying to localize where their beliefs differ from those of liberals (and why their beliefs are superior to liberals’), and in doing so they think (in some cases blatantly unreflectively) to themselves, “I approach the issues like this, so liberals must think about them in the opposite way.” This reasoning, in addition to being blatantly unreflective (did I mention that already? sorry), heavily influenced by biases and preconceived notions that are drawn largely from partisan propaganda (this, I’m afraid, is something liberals are all too prone to as well – read, for example, Amanda Marcotte’s writings on libertarianism), some of which are silly and some of which are a bit more reasonable, but all or at least the bulk of which are clearly wrong. What makes it worse is that these inferred differences are the basis for the rest of the reasoning in each of the guest posts, rendering the entire posts pretty much pointless.
By the way, commodity fetishism, in its Adornoian incarnation: I think you might find it interesting, given some of what you write in this post.
Liberals, on the other hand, are typically only loosely committed to market economics. And that commitment tends to be merely political or instrumental rather than ideological, conceived in the recognition that mainstream America is precommitted to market economics, and thus there is little point in railing against it. Instead, liberals tend to wait for symptoms of large economies, like income disparity or recessions, to present opportunities to put certain economic decisions under the control of the government (from which, incidentally, they never return).
And
. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to circumvent the theoretical altogether and to establish, by fiat, the substantive nature of economic relationships, while ignoring the fact this implicitly results in procedural injustices.
Yet more evidence that conservatives have no idea what liberals actually think. At least no liberals I've ever met, or read in books or on blogs, or heard on television or the radio, from this country in this century (or most of the last). At some point, the League should have a forum in which the liberal writers and/or readers present their basic views and the conservatives theirs (and perhaps the libertarians as well, though as a small political minority they have more of a tendency to lay their basic views on the table than the two major groups do), so that these straw men stop showing up on the front page and actual dialogue might become possible. At this point, at least the conservative guest posters are mostly preaching to the choir with a prayer book full of prayers that they pulled out of their asses.
Since everyone (potentially) benefits both from parks and from a more educated populous, yes, I do think it’s “a judicious use/application of state power.”
Yeah, except nothing in that last paragraph is true of left liberals today, or really ever, in America, and isn't really true of left liberals in Europe, either.
Outside of a real dictatorship of the proletariat, in general the left's focus on labor, for example, hasn't been about controlling all capital for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about insuring a fair share of the product of labor for the worker. Social safety nets, similarly, aren't about redistributing all wealth for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about ensuring that the system that benefits us all doesn't leave anyone out in the cold (literally and figuratively). These are prototypical left-liberal aims in this country, and nothing you've said, or implied, suggests that they're unreasonable, much less impossible to acheive. And certainly nothing you've said implies that they can't be approximated through the sorts of social and economic programs that left-liberals in this country and in Europe regularly propose.
It might be better to call the people folk-Rawlsians than folk-Marxists, because these sorts of things certainly seem more Rawlsian. Or in the extreme, folk-Fichteans or something. Because there's not a lot of Marx in it, since a.) class warfare isn't much of an issue, and b.) there's nothing resembling the view that the proletariat should hold the power, economically or politically, in most left-liberal views in America or Europe (most are folk-technocrats, in fact).
Koz, a.) you should read some socialist writings from the last 20 years. There's not much non-market socialism anymore, and hasn't really been since the 70s or early 80s b.) social Democrats, as they exist in Europe (at least in politically viable entities), are pro-market to the core pretty much by definition. They may not want markets to be as free as American liberals tend to want, but that doesnt' mean that the basic structure on top of which they build their political and economic theories/policies isn't the market, and capitalism.
One of the straw men that you and others I've seen seem to draw is that the redistribution of some wealth, either to create a basic standard of living for the lowest socioeconomic rungs, or to strengthen the middle class, amounts to a complete redistributionist view. What's more, part of the redistributionist view in social democracy, and to a lesser extent, among American liberals, goes towards strengthening the middle class to strengthen the market economy. You may disagree with that, and there are reasons to do so, but they aren't the ones you've described, as the ones you've described don't really have anything to do with the actual positions.
I don't think there is one conservative mindset, any more than there's one liberal one. Nor do I have any clue whom you may misrepresent, or not. However, if both sides do it, it's dreaded only because it's true.
I do wonder, genuinely, how representative Koz' view of the liberal mindset is among conservatives (the previous guest poster on unions had an equally wildly inaccurate view, so it's not like Koz is completely alone). It's hard to say from reading this blog, as the conservatives who regularly tell us what liberals think here range from the delusional rantings of Heidegger to the persecution complex of TvD, with Bob's strange admixture of Voegelin and Sean Hannity in between. While I've seen these types before (well, at least Tom and Bob; Heidegger's too parodical to exist in nature), I've never gotten the impression that they're representative of conservatives at large. And I don't really read any straight-up conservative blogs. But Koz and the other dude (I'm sorry, I really can't be remember his name; the one who stated that the liberal justification for unions is to insure a minimal standard of living, and nothing more) strike me as much more reasonable candidates for representativeness, and I find that somewhat frightening. Not because they or their views are particularly harmful in and of themselves, but because their views are so divorced from reality that, if widely shared, they will make political discourse impossible. I fear that American liberals may also have equally inaccurate views of the conservative mindset, which would make the political discourse even more dysfunctional -- sort of like it actually is at this point.
Truth be told, I'm a bit of a lefty myself. I'm not a communist, but my distance from communism is no greater than my distance from American liberalism (or European market socialism, for that matter). American liberals bother me, but they bother me significantly less than American conservatives.
I await my diagnosis from Bob, now, with bated breath. Or can one's breath be bated in the throes of pneumatic consciousness?
You should put it like this more, instead of getting into the liberal mind and condescending to teach liberals obvious lessons (lessons that have pretty much defined liberal politics for the last 30 years, I might add). This makes more sense, though it still doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Public sector unions, private sector unions, safety nets, various forms of tax reform, health care reform, financial and corporate regulations, etc., combined are supposed to protect and promote the middle class. Since you haven’t argued against any of these, but have instead simply said, “public sector unions don’t get you there alone, if we don’t have anything else, or public sector unions plus anything else won’t get you there, we should abandon it all for something else,” even if you haven’t said what that “something else” is, or what it buys us. So in order to make an actual point, you’d need a.) to show that the things liberals want, from unions to regulation with everything in between, doesn’t help the middle class, and b.) that your alternative, whatever it is, provides an alternative, even if it’s a less favorable one from a liberal standpoint. I don’t predict you doing either of these things, because you’re clearly more interested in scoring broad points against liberals through caricature and condescension.
And who takes it as the operational foundational of the economy? No one I know. At least not in this country, or even in Europe these days (social Democrats are market people to the core, and you can't be a market person and hold that belief).
Good lesson. Now show me where it's not practiced by liberals and the left? Seriously, you're just makin' shit up at this point, given how disconnected from reality you are.
Funny, I seem to recall both sides making arguments about actions being "for the children" and "the greater good," and even some version of "social justice."
And I'm glad you've deigned to teach those of us on the left this valuable lesson, Koz. Now we'll surely drop our plans for global Marxist domination and instead start adopting watered-down health care plans that are to the right of what Republicans were proposing 15 years ago. Oh, and we'll promtly set to work on getting rid of unions, which clearly only work in a perfect world (why else would company towns and conditions like you'll find in this book still dominate in our country's factories and other workplaces?).
Ah, if only you’d written that, instead of the nonsense you did put into this post. This is still ignorant bullshit, but at least it’s not right-wing fantasy-land ignorant bullshit.
I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good, as widely off the mark as your conceptions seem to be, to point out a couple things, but I’ll try anyway. First, unions aren’t supposed to redistribute wealth. They’re designed to make sure it gets more fairly distributed in the first place. The history of unions, in this country and many others, is pretty good evidence that they do this fairly well. That is, the data shows quite clearly that unions help to achieve some semblance of a balance between capital and labor. It may be only a semblance, but it’s much better than what came before.
Second, equality of opportunity is not the same thing as equality of outcome. That many liberals want policies that approximate the former, or that at least work in the direction of it, even if from a great distance, does not imply that they want the latter. And oh yeah, liberals, and Democrats in particular, are pretty much the prototypical pragmatists, so all the nonsense about them only picking the most ideal, though impractical policies, is just that. There is one party in this country that refuses to compromise on its “ideals” (at least to compromise with the other party; compromising with big business is something both parties are always willing to do), and it ain’t the Democrats.
By the way, the argument for unions isn’t, necessarily, that the distribution of wealth is “too top heavy,” because even if it weren’t too top heavy (it quite clearly is), unions would, under the actual arguments for unions, still be necessary.
Since What Is to Be Done, which got its title from a famous Russian novel, by the way, is a call to action, What Can Be Done wouldn’t have worked very well as either a title or a companion piece. The rhetorical point, as a result, completely misses the mark.
I point this out not to be pedantic, but because it is the only thing in this post that admits of correction, much less counterargument. The rest of the piece is filled with so many gross misconceptions, or based on such misconceptions, as to make correction or counter pointless.
The last two guest posts by conservatives, this one and the previous one on labor unions, have me genuinely worried that the misconceptions of conservative thought on the “left” might be as bad as the misconceptions of liberal thought on the “right.” If so, it’s no wonder we’re always talking past each other. We haven’t the slightest idea how the other side sees things.
Blaise, oh, I’m all for reproaching the ignorant when it comes to Nietzsche, particularly since so many seem to have learned him through Bloom (shudder). I can’t say I find your characterization all that compelling, mostly because I approach Nietzsche, and history, differently, but I sympathize with your motives.
I've been tempted, at times, to wonder whether Blaise is not the "liberal" incarnation of Heidegger (who himself admits that he uses multiple names in comments), for this very reason. That and the recycling (how often does he use that broken arm metaphor, e.g.?). This view depends entirely on Heidegger being schtick, though, which my more charitable side tells he must be.
On “Why We Disagree About Taxes, Entitlements, and Economic Theory in General”
Logical positivism in economics? That’s a new one.
No, it's an old one.
"
I disagree to some extent with Haidt's characterization (and from the liberal end of the social science's, with Lakoff's as well), but the point they both make, that we're coming from entirely different moral and even epistemic perspectives, is definitely an important one.
"
Haidt is a social psychologist, and has done some really interesting research, but like most social psychologists, his theorizing goes way, way beyond his data. I used to jokingly call social psychology E! Psychology. Haidt, though he does interesting research, in his writings for the general public tends to justify that label.
"
Let me say more about this. What the recent conservative guest posters are clearly doing is trying to localize where their beliefs differ from those of liberals (and why their beliefs are superior to liberals’), and in doing so they think (in some cases blatantly unreflectively) to themselves, “I approach the issues like this, so liberals must think about them in the opposite way.” This reasoning, in addition to being blatantly unreflective (did I mention that already? sorry), heavily influenced by biases and preconceived notions that are drawn largely from partisan propaganda (this, I’m afraid, is something liberals are all too prone to as well – read, for example, Amanda Marcotte’s writings on libertarianism), some of which are silly and some of which are a bit more reasonable, but all or at least the bulk of which are clearly wrong. What makes it worse is that these inferred differences are the basis for the rest of the reasoning in each of the guest posts, rendering the entire posts pretty much pointless.
By the way, commodity fetishism, in its Adornoian incarnation: I think you might find it interesting, given some of what you write in this post.
"
Liberals, on the other hand, are typically only loosely committed to market economics. And that commitment tends to be merely political or instrumental rather than ideological, conceived in the recognition that mainstream America is precommitted to market economics, and thus there is little point in railing against it. Instead, liberals tend to wait for symptoms of large economies, like income disparity or recessions, to present opportunities to put certain economic decisions under the control of the government (from which, incidentally, they never return).
And
. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to circumvent the theoretical altogether and to establish, by fiat, the substantive nature of economic relationships, while ignoring the fact this implicitly results in procedural injustices.
Yet more evidence that conservatives have no idea what liberals actually think. At least no liberals I've ever met, or read in books or on blogs, or heard on television or the radio, from this country in this century (or most of the last). At some point, the League should have a forum in which the liberal writers and/or readers present their basic views and the conservatives theirs (and perhaps the libertarians as well, though as a small political minority they have more of a tendency to lay their basic views on the table than the two major groups do), so that these straw men stop showing up on the front page and actual dialogue might become possible. At this point, at least the conservative guest posters are mostly preaching to the choir with a prayer book full of prayers that they pulled out of their asses.
On “Closed Front Doors, Open Back Doors”
Since everyone (potentially) benefits both from parks and from a more educated populous, yes, I do think it’s “a judicious use/application of state power.”
On “I actually kind of like the notion of ‘folk Marxism’ but still…”
Yeah, except nothing in that last paragraph is true of left liberals today, or really ever, in America, and isn't really true of left liberals in Europe, either.
Outside of a real dictatorship of the proletariat, in general the left's focus on labor, for example, hasn't been about controlling all capital for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about insuring a fair share of the product of labor for the worker. Social safety nets, similarly, aren't about redistributing all wealth for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about ensuring that the system that benefits us all doesn't leave anyone out in the cold (literally and figuratively). These are prototypical left-liberal aims in this country, and nothing you've said, or implied, suggests that they're unreasonable, much less impossible to acheive. And certainly nothing you've said implies that they can't be approximated through the sorts of social and economic programs that left-liberals in this country and in Europe regularly propose.
It might be better to call the people folk-Rawlsians than folk-Marxists, because these sorts of things certainly seem more Rawlsian. Or in the extreme, folk-Fichteans or something. Because there's not a lot of Marx in it, since a.) class warfare isn't much of an issue, and b.) there's nothing resembling the view that the proletariat should hold the power, economically or politically, in most left-liberal views in America or Europe (most are folk-technocrats, in fact).
"
Koz, a.) you should read some socialist writings from the last 20 years. There's not much non-market socialism anymore, and hasn't really been since the 70s or early 80s b.) social Democrats, as they exist in Europe (at least in politically viable entities), are pro-market to the core pretty much by definition. They may not want markets to be as free as American liberals tend to want, but that doesnt' mean that the basic structure on top of which they build their political and economic theories/policies isn't the market, and capitalism.
One of the straw men that you and others I've seen seem to draw is that the redistribution of some wealth, either to create a basic standard of living for the lowest socioeconomic rungs, or to strengthen the middle class, amounts to a complete redistributionist view. What's more, part of the redistributionist view in social democracy, and to a lesser extent, among American liberals, goes towards strengthening the middle class to strengthen the market economy. You may disagree with that, and there are reasons to do so, but they aren't the ones you've described, as the ones you've described don't really have anything to do with the actual positions.
"
See, that was perfect.
"
I don't think there is one conservative mindset, any more than there's one liberal one. Nor do I have any clue whom you may misrepresent, or not. However, if both sides do it, it's dreaded only because it's true.
"
I do wonder, genuinely, how representative Koz' view of the liberal mindset is among conservatives (the previous guest poster on unions had an equally wildly inaccurate view, so it's not like Koz is completely alone). It's hard to say from reading this blog, as the conservatives who regularly tell us what liberals think here range from the delusional rantings of Heidegger to the persecution complex of TvD, with Bob's strange admixture of Voegelin and Sean Hannity in between. While I've seen these types before (well, at least Tom and Bob; Heidegger's too parodical to exist in nature), I've never gotten the impression that they're representative of conservatives at large. And I don't really read any straight-up conservative blogs. But Koz and the other dude (I'm sorry, I really can't be remember his name; the one who stated that the liberal justification for unions is to insure a minimal standard of living, and nothing more) strike me as much more reasonable candidates for representativeness, and I find that somewhat frightening. Not because they or their views are particularly harmful in and of themselves, but because their views are so divorced from reality that, if widely shared, they will make political discourse impossible. I fear that American liberals may also have equally inaccurate views of the conservative mindset, which would make the political discourse even more dysfunctional -- sort of like it actually is at this point.
"
Truth be told, I'm a bit of a lefty myself. I'm not a communist, but my distance from communism is no greater than my distance from American liberalism (or European market socialism, for that matter). American liberals bother me, but they bother me significantly less than American conservatives.
I await my diagnosis from Bob, now, with bated breath. Or can one's breath be bated in the throes of pneumatic consciousness?
"
Yeah, I'm not sure what history you're looking at, or what point you're trying to make, but enjoyed it nonetheless.
"
You should put it like this more, instead of getting into the liberal mind and condescending to teach liberals obvious lessons (lessons that have pretty much defined liberal politics for the last 30 years, I might add). This makes more sense, though it still doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Public sector unions, private sector unions, safety nets, various forms of tax reform, health care reform, financial and corporate regulations, etc., combined are supposed to protect and promote the middle class. Since you haven’t argued against any of these, but have instead simply said, “public sector unions don’t get you there alone, if we don’t have anything else, or public sector unions plus anything else won’t get you there, we should abandon it all for something else,” even if you haven’t said what that “something else” is, or what it buys us. So in order to make an actual point, you’d need a.) to show that the things liberals want, from unions to regulation with everything in between, doesn’t help the middle class, and b.) that your alternative, whatever it is, provides an alternative, even if it’s a less favorable one from a liberal standpoint. I don’t predict you doing either of these things, because you’re clearly more interested in scoring broad points against liberals through caricature and condescension.
"
And who takes it as the operational foundational of the economy? No one I know. At least not in this country, or even in Europe these days (social Democrats are market people to the core, and you can't be a market person and hold that belief).
"
Good lesson. Now show me where it's not practiced by liberals and the left? Seriously, you're just makin' shit up at this point, given how disconnected from reality you are.
"
Funny, I seem to recall both sides making arguments about actions being "for the children" and "the greater good," and even some version of "social justice."
"
And I'm glad you've deigned to teach those of us on the left this valuable lesson, Koz. Now we'll surely drop our plans for global Marxist domination and instead start adopting watered-down health care plans that are to the right of what Republicans were proposing 15 years ago. Oh, and we'll promtly set to work on getting rid of unions, which clearly only work in a perfect world (why else would company towns and conditions like you'll find in this book still dominate in our country's factories and other workplaces?).
On “High Hopes”
Ah, if only you’d written that, instead of the nonsense you did put into this post. This is still ignorant bullshit, but at least it’s not right-wing fantasy-land ignorant bullshit.
I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good, as widely off the mark as your conceptions seem to be, to point out a couple things, but I’ll try anyway. First, unions aren’t supposed to redistribute wealth. They’re designed to make sure it gets more fairly distributed in the first place. The history of unions, in this country and many others, is pretty good evidence that they do this fairly well. That is, the data shows quite clearly that unions help to achieve some semblance of a balance between capital and labor. It may be only a semblance, but it’s much better than what came before.
Second, equality of opportunity is not the same thing as equality of outcome. That many liberals want policies that approximate the former, or that at least work in the direction of it, even if from a great distance, does not imply that they want the latter. And oh yeah, liberals, and Democrats in particular, are pretty much the prototypical pragmatists, so all the nonsense about them only picking the most ideal, though impractical policies, is just that. There is one party in this country that refuses to compromise on its “ideals” (at least to compromise with the other party; compromising with big business is something both parties are always willing to do), and it ain’t the Democrats.
By the way, the argument for unions isn’t, necessarily, that the distribution of wealth is “too top heavy,” because even if it weren’t too top heavy (it quite clearly is), unions would, under the actual arguments for unions, still be necessary.
"
Since What Is to Be Done, which got its title from a famous Russian novel, by the way, is a call to action, What Can Be Done wouldn’t have worked very well as either a title or a companion piece. The rhetorical point, as a result, completely misses the mark.
I point this out not to be pedantic, but because it is the only thing in this post that admits of correction, much less counterargument. The rest of the piece is filled with so many gross misconceptions, or based on such misconceptions, as to make correction or counter pointless.
The last two guest posts by conservatives, this one and the previous one on labor unions, have me genuinely worried that the misconceptions of conservative thought on the “left” might be as bad as the misconceptions of liberal thought on the “right.” If so, it’s no wonder we’re always talking past each other. We haven’t the slightest idea how the other side sees things.
On “Birtherism”
I love it when Bob talks dirty
"
Blaise, oh, I’m all for reproaching the ignorant when it comes to Nietzsche, particularly since so many seem to have learned him through Bloom (shudder). I can’t say I find your characterization all that compelling, mostly because I approach Nietzsche, and history, differently, but I sympathize with your motives.
"
That comment was a little manic.
I've been tempted, at times, to wonder whether Blaise is not the "liberal" incarnation of Heidegger (who himself admits that he uses multiple names in comments), for this very reason. That and the recycling (how often does he use that broken arm metaphor, e.g.?). This view depends entirely on Heidegger being schtick, though, which my more charitable side tells he must be.
"
We knew a great deal about the Pearl Harbor attack before it occurred. That's the reference.
"
Mike, I submit to you Pearl Harbor.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.