Say what you will about modern libertarians but their intellectual roots stem from classical liberalism, itself a reaction against the abusive long-lived regimes of European power, secular and religious
Which reinforces my position that modern libertarians aren't really American. Like socialism this is a movement that, at its root, is an alien doctrine on American soil. That's not to say it has had no merit or influence, though. For example, I believe our relatively absolute view of free speech is probably more influenced by modern libertarianism than it was by the Founders view of things. But we tend to read the present as the past and we forget the past or at least some important elements of it.
One idea that gets lost here is that the American system really was founded on the idea that the community would direct itself in its growth and form. Many of the early debates in the US revolved around just this idea (Hamilton's ideas to promote finance and industry, Jefferson's to promote 'yoeman farmers' by expanding westward, the debate about whether or not slavery would grow, the development of the west thru canals and later railroads). This is at odds with the libertarian idea of just getting a market system and then yielding such decisions to it. What has happened in some sense is that the early history of the US has been 'retconned' into a libertarian story which somehow got lost in the midsts of time or maybe was betrayed by evil or misguided people around FDR? TR? Lincoln's? time.
A problem with libertarianism is that it doesn't really want to address its alienness. Socialism doesn't have a choice since its a theory that required the industrial revolution to happen first leaving fewer ways to read itself back in the history of colonial America. In contrast it wants to pretend that it's just restoring the status quo of the US before some unspecified statists ruined things (with modification, of course, slavery isn't on the agenda but we will just pretend it didn't exist in American history). IMO its more profitable to view progressivists and conservatives as more traditional American political philosophies who have been influenced by the European 'pair' of socialism and libertarianism.
A fair point, but then what's the counter? What exactly would be 'up for debate and decision' in a country of dedicated libertarians? And I did provide an example, the debate that took place here over the trivial issue of some towns opting to have trash pick up and other towns opting to make residents contract their own pickup. When even this trivial issue has a 'right answer' and deviating from it is violating all sacred liberty you really do have to a wonder what exactly does gov't debate and decide under a libertarian system beyond the state bird and motto?
Jaybird's point is good but a conservative (I mean one schooled on actual conservative thought, not Rush or Hannity) would point out that skepticism about the power of human reason is one of their key doctrines for a reason. When you get a movement that asserts history should be swept aside and combine that with an unlimited faith in the power of human minds to logically reason you are setting the stage for diaster. The fact that libertarians are so assertive yet disagree with each other so much just proves the point. The radicals of the French revolution and various communist revolutions weren't that different.
I think there's a more important difference here than trust. Libertarians are un-American.
Ok that's a bit strong but there is I think a disconnect between the ideas of the Founders and the ideas of the Ayn Randish Libertarian mindset. The Founders cared a lot about government, Libertarians seem to think government is an afterthought. Read thru a lot of libertarian stuff and you start to get the sense that laws are somethng more like applied geometry or chemistry. You have your starting assumptions, apply logic and out pops all acceptable and non-acceptable laws. For just about everything, the impression seems to be there's one, only one, correct libertarian answer. Hence not to long ago this blog talked about towns that provide weekly garbage collection and the libertarian minded here fretted about the 'tyranny' being imposed on those who wanted to have their own private garbage man cart away their empty Yohoo bottles.
This then leads to the question of what exactly should gov't and voters be debating and care about? The impression I get is that the only thing that's left for politics to worry about is the most trivial of issues like whether the town's busiest street should be named after Martin Luther King Jr. or what the official state flower should be. Of course libertarians do care a lot about politics but they care only because politics hasn't adopted their 'system' of 'mathematical policy making' where all policy questions are resolved by deducting the proper libertarian answer. Any policy that cannot be confirmed as being consistent with libertarian theorem making is tyranny. Hence the image of libertarians getting all uppity over trash collection. No one cares about trash collection. They consider themselves oppressed not because they really are oppressed but because their ideology tells them they are being oppressed by a system not in perfect conformity with their theology.
Hence there's a disconnect from American political thought. Starting with the Founders, American thought cared a lot about gov't. For example, a colonial motto was 'taxation without representation'. But libertarians don't really care about representation. Their motto is 'taxation is theft'. Taxes imposed by representation are no different than taxes imposed by an evil Emperor or Robot Overlords....unless such taxes somehow conformed to libertarian ideology for the few approved libertarian ends to gov't.
Most American thought cares a lot about gov't but in a real sense libertarian thought doesn't. How a gov't works seems irrelevant. If the gov't complied with libertarian 'solutions' it doesn't matter if its a representative democracy, a dictatorship, or even a theocratic state ruled by a cabal of elite 'libertarian priests'. Libertarians seem to have a soft spot for the Founders because they think the Founders were trying to use things like representative democracy, a bicamel legislature, 'checks and balances', federalism, etc. as some type of social engineering to ensure that the gov't of the US was as close to full libertarian compliance as possible. I have to wonder, though, if a supercomputer could reincarnate an Ayn Rand avatar would libertarians feel comfortable making the gov't an eternal dictatorship under it provided she was 'perfect' in her ability to always render decisions in a disinterested libertarian manner?
The mainstream schools of American thought do think gov't matters. It's often forgotten that the Constitution was written to *increase*, not *decrease* the gov'ts power (see the Articles of Confederation). One of the first big debates that the Founding generation had was between the Jeffersonian idea of a nation of small, private, land ownin farmers and Hamilton's idea of a nation of industry, finance and commerce. Most American schools of thought cared about the process of how that debate should be decided. Were 'special interests' too easily able to shape gov't policy? Or was the majority too powerful letting them trample the interests of 'special interests' unfairly. To a libertarian, though, this debate has to be absurd. The 'theology' says rule of law, contracts, free market and whatever society ends up being it will be.....if you even want to consider 'society' to be a non-fictional concept. Yet here we have the Founders, demi-gods in libertarian theology basically debating what flavor of 'social engineering' the early Federal gov't would engage in. They thought there was a debate here and the 'right answer' for the United States may not necessarily be the right answer elsewhere hence the concern about the rules of how the debate would be conducted and decided. Libertarians, though, don't realy believe in debate. Either your system produces the right answer or it doesn't.
It’s easy (and true) to say, as in Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, that lessening the vitriol in politics has nothing to do with moderating positions. Easy and true, but tough in practice. At what point, for example, does opposition to immigration policies make the transition from legitimate debate to hate speech? Is everyone who denies the President was born in the United States automatically contributing to the coarsening dialogue or can that be considered a rather extreme (and hard to justify) position that nevertheless has its place in politics?
I think its less about vitriolic speech as much as it is about speech the speaker does not mean and the audience has been trained to not hold them to mean. For example, in response to Angle's '2nd amendment remedies' speech, people have said to me things like "come on, you don't think she really wanted someone to shoot Harry Reid". To me that's the problem, she doesn't but that is the plain meaning of what she said.
And let's not even say its wrong. I'm perfectly comfortable with people who honestly advocate violence or armed revolution. For example, consider radical anti-abortion protestors who put up 'wanted dead or alive' posters with abortionists. These people have a point. They honestly believe abortionists are committing murder. They honestly believe force can be legitimately used to stop murder. They see this as a justification for the use of force elsewhere (such as for invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein) and they get angry that when the subject of abortion turns up suddenly they are given the Christian pacifism lines about love the sinner and turn the other cheek. So they advocate killing abortionists.
Vitriolic yes. Hateful yes. Probably not illegal unless its uttered inside an actual conspiracy or its uttered in a condition of imminent action (such as yelling "Kill that abortionist" to a lynch mob poised for action). But it's honest speech confering a point of view. And they take the consquences of their speech. The mainstream writes them off. Republicans will not let them speak at their conventions, mainstream pro-life groups will expel them from membership.
"2nd amendment remedies" is not honest political speech, though. The speaker does not really believe shooting Harry Reid is an acceptable 'plan B' to failing to win the Senate or failing to repeal the health bill or whatever. This is the problem with much of the Tea Party. It's a lot of tough talk about watering the 'tree of liberty' with blood and revolution against tyranny but at the end of the day almost everyone expects to return home to the status quo....like college kids who protest for communist revolution during the school year, then return to the country club in the summer. The rhetoric of violence coarsens debate because it ceases to be about violence and begins to be a game to simply signal "I'm more conservative than that guy".
So I don't think the 'rule' should be no vitriolic speech. The shooting will generate that as a norm briefly but then we will go back to being opposed to each other. I also think its silly to imagine that we should never use the metaphors of guns or war in political speech. I do, though, think that speakers should be held to their words. I think people who casually drop '2nd amendment remedies' should be treated like, say, an American Muslim who casually suggests shooting Senators who support giving aid to Israel may be required if Obama can't get a '2 state solution' working down there. I think the appeasers should also cease. Don't rush in to say '2nd amendment remedies' doesn't really mean she wanted Reid shot. If she doesn't mean that then she shouldn't say it.
But if violent rhetoric acts as a dog whistle to crazies, then how do you explain someone like Ted Kaczynski?
And you'll sometimes just get crazies.
So, great, you’re not blaming Sarah Palin; you’re just calling for mass censorship. That’s supposed to be better?
No one has called for censorship except maybe one Congressman who proposed a silly bill about 'crosshairs' style political ads that will almost certainly go nowhere and should go nowhere.
I'm not even saying people shouldn't call for violence. I'm saying if someone asserts something like failure to defeat a Senate leader in an upcoming election merits a '2nd amendment remedy' as a legitimate backup plan they should be treated like they are serious. This means unless you too feel this is a reasonable position, the speaker should be considered outside the acceptable mainstream. What should not happen is this namby pamby excuse making for the right where we pretend its all just political rhetoric that shouldn't be taken seriously. If you can't be serious when you use serious language it's not censorship to say you should expect to be treated as an unserious person.
I think this raises the issue of the randomness that comes with insanity. Major Hasan can be viewed as an Islamic radical but maybe he is just as insane as this shooter but when he went to look for something to feed his insanity he found radical Islam available for free. This shooter, though, maybe couldn't find a ready made insane ideology to his liking so made up his own with 'mind control grammer' and 'new math'.
Several years ago I used to work with a Hatian woman who I was friends with for a while. She was opinionated, spunky and interesting person. When we were working together she started getting in trouble and it seemed like she was being treated unfairly. After being put on probation for a while, she was finally fired but soon found work at another company. We lost touch but then every now and then she would call me to catch up. Things were going well for a while but then she started saying odd things. The new job that was great for her started to turn bad, people were out to get her. Even after she was fired she believed her old employers might be tapping her laptop to spy on her emails. A few years after that I bumped into her at the library, she hadn't been working for several years and was complaining abou thow hard it was. Her marriage had ended and she implied her son had some type of falling out with her.
Very clearly she had developed some type of mental illness (or maybe it was dormant all along). I hope her family pushed to get her some type of help (she seemed well dressed and neat for someone who hadn't worked for years so clearly she was getting help from someone or something). But if instead of just screwing things up at work she had done something like shoot lots of people I'd have to be yet another person saying "I saw warning signs that something was wrong". Unfortunately mental illness comes in lots of degrees and many people can be mentally ill but will never be a danger to anyone. If they refuse to accept or seek help its very hard to do anything unless they do something bad.
That's the beauty of it. If you don't call for violence when it's not justified that's good in itself, even if it doesn't actually prevent any random crazy attacks.
The 'dog whistle' factor also explains why notable attacks seem to bring out copycat attacks later on by people with no connection to the original attack. For a while it seemed like some kid started shooting at his high school at least once a year. After 9/11 some kid took his father's airplane and crashed it into an office building killing only himself.
You're right a Seasame Street rerun might set off a crazy. But we can't really control that and even if we could we'd want to have reruns in our lives. On the other hand, I think refraining from violent rhetoric unless you honest to God believe violence is honestly justified is in itself a good general rule that has the added benefit that just maybe it might spare us some insanity from the insane.
James Fallows had an interesting take on the matter. John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln and it fit perfectly with the times. There was a Civil War which the South had lost and Booth was a partisan for the South.
Likewise we've had assassinations that everyone agrees come out of the blue with no connection to much of anything other than the shooter's insanity or criminality (see, for example, the attempts on Ford and Reagan by a follower of Manson & a guy hoping to win Jodi Foster)
Since then, though, we've had periods of very high tension when one would expect someone to do something crazy over that tension but when something happened it was by someone who had no stake in the main tension. For example there was a lot of tension in Dallas in 1963 and a lot of hatred of Kennedy over integration and over communism. We know this because the historical record indicates that people were worried about the President visitng Dallas and other officials encountered problems. Yet when the shooting actually happened it wasn't from someone defending Jim Crow or someone outraged over the Bay of Pigs but by someone who appears to have been angry that JFK was too anti-communist. In other words someone who took an action that seemed to fit with the atmosphere but had a motive that was different from the atmosphere.
Likewise RFK's killer didn't care much about civil rights or the Vietnam War but about supporting Israel, which few people were passionate about at the time and wasn't a policy that was esp. associated with RFK. No one was shocked that someone would shoot Martin Luther King Jr. but one would have expected his killer to be a racist, yet James Earl Ray never seemed to have any notable racial beliefs about MLK.
Briefly, we have periods in our history where you'd expect some assassinations and we get assassinations during those periods but the people who committ them seem to have motivations that are oddly out of sync with what one would expect.
This isn't perfect of course. Tim McVeigh, for example, seemed in tenor with his times (the black helicopter crowd with a hard on for the BATF and Waco) and had a motive in sync too.
This lends support to the following hypothesis that's both good and bad. The good is that even with highly emotional issues, most Americans trust the 'system' implicitly and are loyal to it. Unlike some other countries where a political disagreement can easily lead to people setting off bombs, most Americans will respect the law and system. They will not blow up the court house if abortion is ruled legal or same sex marriage recognized. They don't attack immigration detention centers and free illegal immigrants if the Dream Act is defeated in Congress. Despite heated rhetoric, Americans mostly will not resort to violence when it comes to the stuff they get heated about.
The bad news is that the heated rhetoric does act as a 'dog whistle' to crazies. If you say that '2nd amendment remedies' may be needed if the health bill passes, people who hate the bill aren't going to shoot anyone. But the guy who thinks the gov't is controlling his mind through the neighbors dog may start thinking a '2nd amendment remedy' is an idea worth considering. Now before you dismiss this as just a way to justify blaming Sarah Palin, it really is bad news since it means that we can't expect to stop assassins by looking at the places we'd expect them to come from. The blog full of people saying arms should be taken up over health care aren't quite as likely to produce a terrorist but the nutcase huddled in his mom's basement who is totally incoherent but can pick up on the 'spirits' of his time will do something.
Again behavior often reveals more truth than words.
As soon as this happened, a lot of the right immediately recognized that they should move away from the rhetoric. Why? Because they knew. As was pointed out, as soon as the sheriff made his statement, the AZ Tea Party went ballistic. Why? He never singled out the right? Because they knew.
Now tomorrow if you read that someone got raped in the park near you, you're probably not going to erase TheHun from your browsing history. While porn might be analogous it's only partially so.
Most people require some regular form of sexual release. Do most people also need to call for '2nd amendment remedies' on a regular basis? Are you saying the right is just a form of mass intellectual masturbation?
"But what if they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by pulling back? Again, the point is that unfairly associating them with the attack validates the very rhetoric they use and that you are criticizing them for using. "
How does it validate the rhetoric? Let's say I go around saying the President should be shoot for continuing an illegal war in Afghanistan. Then one day someone actually shoots the president. People look at me and say I should knock off that bullshit. But then it comes out that the guy who shot the President did it not because he hated the war in Afghanistan but because he thought Spongebob Squarepants was telling him to do it from the TV. How am I now 'validated'?
"You ignore the possibility that they actually feel like liberals are out to get them, and actually believe the sentiments behind their statements , even if they’re hyperbolic about the extent to which they feel that."
So they get a pass because they insist on having paranoid feelings? How about expecting them to can the paranoia in addition to canning the rhetoric?
"It’s been said many times that this past Congress was remarkably successful in passing its agenda, and that much of that agenda was quite ambitious and definitely not remotely consonant with movement conservatism"
And the Congress before that approved the Iraq War, passed massive tax cuts & created Medicare Part D which was Bush's idea. Last time I checked the last Congress was there because they won an election just like the Congress before that.
"Given those facts, it should not be remotely surprising that anger and fear on the Right is at an all time high, regardless of whether it’s misplaced. "
Whether or not its misplaced is irrelevant. Those who are angry or fearful do not get an excuse. If you're touting '2nd amendment remedies' you should be booted off the stage and I don't care if you say it because you're cynically trying to score votes or if you're honestly angry and fearful.
"The one small good thing that could have come out of this attack would be for the Right to recognize the basic humanity of the Left and that, because of that humanity, maybe the Left really isn’t out to get them. "
And why would that come out of this attack? Because when you don't respect the basic humanity of the people you disagree with you lower the barriers against things like this happening. But as far as the left goes, having the right recognize its 'basic humanity' is not a negotiating point or a 'nice to have'. It's expected to be a default position and the left should angrily demand it, not ask for it politely as if its some type of favor. If the right is so emotionally immature that it cannot grant this unless people come begging on their knees then we have a very serious problem in this country.
1. I don't think violent rhetoric is really just like porn.
2. The question isn't whether or not there was violent rhetoric in the 60's when there were more political assassinations, the question is would the 60's have been less or more violent if more people in repectable positions had flirted with violence.
We may never know. Maybe if there was *more* extreme rhetoric in the air he would have shot no one and instead buried himself in his moms basement making youtube videos and writing thousand page books about the evils of 'mind control grammer'.
But in general a good case is there that violent rhetoric does not help just as wearing seat belts helps lower car crash deaths. It may well be that this doesn't apply to one particular shooting or car crash, the opposite may even apply in particular cases but as a rule I think this should be taken as a warning.
I think you're being a bit too coy here. The unabomber does appear to be a case of a crazy person doing something for a crazy reason that's barely a reason. Tim McVeigh, though, does not. He seemed to have a very clear, very definate reason and I think he was quite sane. His moral calculations were evil but he was under no delusions IMO.
Now I think its fair to say that some of the rhetoric at that time was over the top and wrong. Does that mean if people were more restrained when going on about Waco that McVeigh wouldn't have done what he did? No, he might have anyway. But like I said if your house has bad wiring you don't make the problem worse by smoking in bed with a bucket of gas in the bedroom.
I don't buy that the shooter was totally uneffected by the rhetorical environment. When you have the idea in the air that the gov't is illegitimate, that force may be necessary to right things if elections don't work, there's no reason to think this message doesn't travel. Recall Keynes's well known quote:
"Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."
Madmen can also distill in their frenzy ideas being articulated by the mainstream political discourse. If shooting is a possible response to the healthcare mandate then why not a response to 'mind control by grammer'?
By 'take control' I mean win the mid-term election. It was a historic win after all since the Dems had the House for decades. If over the top rhetoric back then was due to feeling powerless that should have helped a lot. What more could they have reasonably asked for? Have the states pass a Constitutional amendment ousting Clinton two years into his first term and installing Bob Dole as President?
Even if they didn't actually take over congress yet one would think that the 'feeling powerless' would have at least been partially dispelled by taking control of not one but both houses of Congress. I think there is something odd about the way Republicans view the White House, it's almost as if they feel entitled to it at all times and if they don't get it they veer towards the nutty zone. But they are more apt to cede Congress to Democrats without feeling as they the country's been 'stolen' from them.
My question to you then is: so why pin the blame on them unfairly? If they pull back, isn’t it likely that they did so in spite of being blamed unfairly, and that being blamed unfairly will decrease the amount they pull back?
I agree they shouldn't be blamed unfairly. Like I said, if someone wants to show up at a Sarah Palin speech with a sign that says "You have blood on your hands" I think that's unfair. If they want to say Engle should have said "2nd amendment remedy" I'd agree. If they want to say she facilitated murder I'd say that's wrong.
If they 'decrease the amount they pull back' because some on the left unfairly blame them....well they should know two wrongs don't make a right and if they don't know it then they should be booted out of respectable discourse.
In terms of why they pulled back....well we don't know but you know I do think its interesting that a lot of people had an 'ohhh shit' reaction when they first heard about the shooting and I'm sure the first thought that leaped into their head was something coming from the right. There's a reason for that, it fits the picture and makes sense and the reason it does is because the rhetoric and antics have been ripe for a while now.
Now it appears that it didn't go down that way. That's not unprecedented. In '63 there was a lot of fear about JFK visiting Dallas and when it happened the assumption was something from the right. But God enjoys making fun of assumptions and it turned out that Oswald was, if anything, coming at JFK from the left.
Likewise I disagree its about two wrongs making a right. My point is that giving the right a pass on the gounds that we see no clear connection to this psychotic killer is not justified and wouldn't be appreciated by the right. Being that such rhetoric is over the line it should be criticizied and when a good illustration appears it should be used.
Returning to the analogy of your firend getting killed in a car crash, you'd use that to illustrate the need to be safer to your kids even if that particular crash couldn't have been avoided. There's no good reason to assume that nutcases who do things like phone in death threats over '2nd amendment remedies' rhetoric would never go a step beyond that.
I would say an illustration may be a better phrase to use than a connection.
Your dates are backwards in regards to the Republicans 'calming down' after taking the Congress rather than as a result of the OK city bombing. The bombing was in 95, the Republican Revolution was 94. Helms's infamous statement about Clinton needing a bodyguard if he ever came to his state was in Nov of 94. Winning the Senate and House didn't seem to have been sufficient to 'calm him down'. AFter the OK bombing, though, Helms did calm down a bit even though Tim McVeigh's obsessions over Waco were not shared as much by Helms. He nonetheless saw the unwisdom of continuing on as usual with the 'illustration' of what can happen when you encourage such things.
Was he referring to a show where Bill Mahr said that if capitalists succeeded in getting social security turned into a 401K type system someone should apply a '2nd amendment remedy' to downtown Manhatten? If so he was right.
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On “Progressives vs. Libertarians”
Say what you will about modern libertarians but their intellectual roots stem from classical liberalism, itself a reaction against the abusive long-lived regimes of European power, secular and religious
Which reinforces my position that modern libertarians aren't really American. Like socialism this is a movement that, at its root, is an alien doctrine on American soil. That's not to say it has had no merit or influence, though. For example, I believe our relatively absolute view of free speech is probably more influenced by modern libertarianism than it was by the Founders view of things. But we tend to read the present as the past and we forget the past or at least some important elements of it.
One idea that gets lost here is that the American system really was founded on the idea that the community would direct itself in its growth and form. Many of the early debates in the US revolved around just this idea (Hamilton's ideas to promote finance and industry, Jefferson's to promote 'yoeman farmers' by expanding westward, the debate about whether or not slavery would grow, the development of the west thru canals and later railroads). This is at odds with the libertarian idea of just getting a market system and then yielding such decisions to it. What has happened in some sense is that the early history of the US has been 'retconned' into a libertarian story which somehow got lost in the midsts of time or maybe was betrayed by evil or misguided people around FDR? TR? Lincoln's? time.
A problem with libertarianism is that it doesn't really want to address its alienness. Socialism doesn't have a choice since its a theory that required the industrial revolution to happen first leaving fewer ways to read itself back in the history of colonial America. In contrast it wants to pretend that it's just restoring the status quo of the US before some unspecified statists ruined things (with modification, of course, slavery isn't on the agenda but we will just pretend it didn't exist in American history). IMO its more profitable to view progressivists and conservatives as more traditional American political philosophies who have been influenced by the European 'pair' of socialism and libertarianism.
"
A fair point, but then what's the counter? What exactly would be 'up for debate and decision' in a country of dedicated libertarians? And I did provide an example, the debate that took place here over the trivial issue of some towns opting to have trash pick up and other towns opting to make residents contract their own pickup. When even this trivial issue has a 'right answer' and deviating from it is violating all sacred liberty you really do have to a wonder what exactly does gov't debate and decide under a libertarian system beyond the state bird and motto?
Jaybird's point is good but a conservative (I mean one schooled on actual conservative thought, not Rush or Hannity) would point out that skepticism about the power of human reason is one of their key doctrines for a reason. When you get a movement that asserts history should be swept aside and combine that with an unlimited faith in the power of human minds to logically reason you are setting the stage for diaster. The fact that libertarians are so assertive yet disagree with each other so much just proves the point. The radicals of the French revolution and various communist revolutions weren't that different.
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Yes that's the ironic part about fundamentalists and usually why they don't get very far.
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I think there's a more important difference here than trust. Libertarians are un-American.
Ok that's a bit strong but there is I think a disconnect between the ideas of the Founders and the ideas of the Ayn Randish Libertarian mindset. The Founders cared a lot about government, Libertarians seem to think government is an afterthought. Read thru a lot of libertarian stuff and you start to get the sense that laws are somethng more like applied geometry or chemistry. You have your starting assumptions, apply logic and out pops all acceptable and non-acceptable laws. For just about everything, the impression seems to be there's one, only one, correct libertarian answer. Hence not to long ago this blog talked about towns that provide weekly garbage collection and the libertarian minded here fretted about the 'tyranny' being imposed on those who wanted to have their own private garbage man cart away their empty Yohoo bottles.
This then leads to the question of what exactly should gov't and voters be debating and care about? The impression I get is that the only thing that's left for politics to worry about is the most trivial of issues like whether the town's busiest street should be named after Martin Luther King Jr. or what the official state flower should be. Of course libertarians do care a lot about politics but they care only because politics hasn't adopted their 'system' of 'mathematical policy making' where all policy questions are resolved by deducting the proper libertarian answer. Any policy that cannot be confirmed as being consistent with libertarian theorem making is tyranny. Hence the image of libertarians getting all uppity over trash collection. No one cares about trash collection. They consider themselves oppressed not because they really are oppressed but because their ideology tells them they are being oppressed by a system not in perfect conformity with their theology.
Hence there's a disconnect from American political thought. Starting with the Founders, American thought cared a lot about gov't. For example, a colonial motto was 'taxation without representation'. But libertarians don't really care about representation. Their motto is 'taxation is theft'. Taxes imposed by representation are no different than taxes imposed by an evil Emperor or Robot Overlords....unless such taxes somehow conformed to libertarian ideology for the few approved libertarian ends to gov't.
Most American thought cares a lot about gov't but in a real sense libertarian thought doesn't. How a gov't works seems irrelevant. If the gov't complied with libertarian 'solutions' it doesn't matter if its a representative democracy, a dictatorship, or even a theocratic state ruled by a cabal of elite 'libertarian priests'. Libertarians seem to have a soft spot for the Founders because they think the Founders were trying to use things like representative democracy, a bicamel legislature, 'checks and balances', federalism, etc. as some type of social engineering to ensure that the gov't of the US was as close to full libertarian compliance as possible. I have to wonder, though, if a supercomputer could reincarnate an Ayn Rand avatar would libertarians feel comfortable making the gov't an eternal dictatorship under it provided she was 'perfect' in her ability to always render decisions in a disinterested libertarian manner?
The mainstream schools of American thought do think gov't matters. It's often forgotten that the Constitution was written to *increase*, not *decrease* the gov'ts power (see the Articles of Confederation). One of the first big debates that the Founding generation had was between the Jeffersonian idea of a nation of small, private, land ownin farmers and Hamilton's idea of a nation of industry, finance and commerce. Most American schools of thought cared about the process of how that debate should be decided. Were 'special interests' too easily able to shape gov't policy? Or was the majority too powerful letting them trample the interests of 'special interests' unfairly. To a libertarian, though, this debate has to be absurd. The 'theology' says rule of law, contracts, free market and whatever society ends up being it will be.....if you even want to consider 'society' to be a non-fictional concept. Yet here we have the Founders, demi-gods in libertarian theology basically debating what flavor of 'social engineering' the early Federal gov't would engage in. They thought there was a debate here and the 'right answer' for the United States may not necessarily be the right answer elsewhere hence the concern about the rules of how the debate would be conducted and decided. Libertarians, though, don't realy believe in debate. Either your system produces the right answer or it doesn't.
On “Some thoughts on Obama’s memorial service remarks”
It’s easy (and true) to say, as in Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, that lessening the vitriol in politics has nothing to do with moderating positions. Easy and true, but tough in practice. At what point, for example, does opposition to immigration policies make the transition from legitimate debate to hate speech? Is everyone who denies the President was born in the United States automatically contributing to the coarsening dialogue or can that be considered a rather extreme (and hard to justify) position that nevertheless has its place in politics?
I think its less about vitriolic speech as much as it is about speech the speaker does not mean and the audience has been trained to not hold them to mean. For example, in response to Angle's '2nd amendment remedies' speech, people have said to me things like "come on, you don't think she really wanted someone to shoot Harry Reid". To me that's the problem, she doesn't but that is the plain meaning of what she said.
And let's not even say its wrong. I'm perfectly comfortable with people who honestly advocate violence or armed revolution. For example, consider radical anti-abortion protestors who put up 'wanted dead or alive' posters with abortionists. These people have a point. They honestly believe abortionists are committing murder. They honestly believe force can be legitimately used to stop murder. They see this as a justification for the use of force elsewhere (such as for invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein) and they get angry that when the subject of abortion turns up suddenly they are given the Christian pacifism lines about love the sinner and turn the other cheek. So they advocate killing abortionists.
Vitriolic yes. Hateful yes. Probably not illegal unless its uttered inside an actual conspiracy or its uttered in a condition of imminent action (such as yelling "Kill that abortionist" to a lynch mob poised for action). But it's honest speech confering a point of view. And they take the consquences of their speech. The mainstream writes them off. Republicans will not let them speak at their conventions, mainstream pro-life groups will expel them from membership.
"2nd amendment remedies" is not honest political speech, though. The speaker does not really believe shooting Harry Reid is an acceptable 'plan B' to failing to win the Senate or failing to repeal the health bill or whatever. This is the problem with much of the Tea Party. It's a lot of tough talk about watering the 'tree of liberty' with blood and revolution against tyranny but at the end of the day almost everyone expects to return home to the status quo....like college kids who protest for communist revolution during the school year, then return to the country club in the summer. The rhetoric of violence coarsens debate because it ceases to be about violence and begins to be a game to simply signal "I'm more conservative than that guy".
So I don't think the 'rule' should be no vitriolic speech. The shooting will generate that as a norm briefly but then we will go back to being opposed to each other. I also think its silly to imagine that we should never use the metaphors of guns or war in political speech. I do, though, think that speakers should be held to their words. I think people who casually drop '2nd amendment remedies' should be treated like, say, an American Muslim who casually suggests shooting Senators who support giving aid to Israel may be required if Obama can't get a '2 state solution' working down there. I think the appeasers should also cease. Don't rush in to say '2nd amendment remedies' doesn't really mean she wanted Reid shot. If she doesn't mean that then she shouldn't say it.
On “Space Oddity”
But if violent rhetoric acts as a dog whistle to crazies, then how do you explain someone like Ted Kaczynski?
And you'll sometimes just get crazies.
So, great, you’re not blaming Sarah Palin; you’re just calling for mass censorship. That’s supposed to be better?
No one has called for censorship except maybe one Congressman who proposed a silly bill about 'crosshairs' style political ads that will almost certainly go nowhere and should go nowhere.
I'm not even saying people shouldn't call for violence. I'm saying if someone asserts something like failure to defeat a Senate leader in an upcoming election merits a '2nd amendment remedy' as a legitimate backup plan they should be treated like they are serious. This means unless you too feel this is a reasonable position, the speaker should be considered outside the acceptable mainstream. What should not happen is this namby pamby excuse making for the right where we pretend its all just political rhetoric that shouldn't be taken seriously. If you can't be serious when you use serious language it's not censorship to say you should expect to be treated as an unserious person.
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I think this raises the issue of the randomness that comes with insanity. Major Hasan can be viewed as an Islamic radical but maybe he is just as insane as this shooter but when he went to look for something to feed his insanity he found radical Islam available for free. This shooter, though, maybe couldn't find a ready made insane ideology to his liking so made up his own with 'mind control grammer' and 'new math'.
Several years ago I used to work with a Hatian woman who I was friends with for a while. She was opinionated, spunky and interesting person. When we were working together she started getting in trouble and it seemed like she was being treated unfairly. After being put on probation for a while, she was finally fired but soon found work at another company. We lost touch but then every now and then she would call me to catch up. Things were going well for a while but then she started saying odd things. The new job that was great for her started to turn bad, people were out to get her. Even after she was fired she believed her old employers might be tapping her laptop to spy on her emails. A few years after that I bumped into her at the library, she hadn't been working for several years and was complaining abou thow hard it was. Her marriage had ended and she implied her son had some type of falling out with her.
Very clearly she had developed some type of mental illness (or maybe it was dormant all along). I hope her family pushed to get her some type of help (she seemed well dressed and neat for someone who hadn't worked for years so clearly she was getting help from someone or something). But if instead of just screwing things up at work she had done something like shoot lots of people I'd have to be yet another person saying "I saw warning signs that something was wrong". Unfortunately mental illness comes in lots of degrees and many people can be mentally ill but will never be a danger to anyone. If they refuse to accept or seek help its very hard to do anything unless they do something bad.
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I wouldn't quite say excellent. Are we grading on a curve?
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That's the beauty of it. If you don't call for violence when it's not justified that's good in itself, even if it doesn't actually prevent any random crazy attacks.
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The 'dog whistle' factor also explains why notable attacks seem to bring out copycat attacks later on by people with no connection to the original attack. For a while it seemed like some kid started shooting at his high school at least once a year. After 9/11 some kid took his father's airplane and crashed it into an office building killing only himself.
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You're right a Seasame Street rerun might set off a crazy. But we can't really control that and even if we could we'd want to have reruns in our lives. On the other hand, I think refraining from violent rhetoric unless you honest to God believe violence is honestly justified is in itself a good general rule that has the added benefit that just maybe it might spare us some insanity from the insane.
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James Fallows had an interesting take on the matter. John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln and it fit perfectly with the times. There was a Civil War which the South had lost and Booth was a partisan for the South.
Likewise we've had assassinations that everyone agrees come out of the blue with no connection to much of anything other than the shooter's insanity or criminality (see, for example, the attempts on Ford and Reagan by a follower of Manson & a guy hoping to win Jodi Foster)
Since then, though, we've had periods of very high tension when one would expect someone to do something crazy over that tension but when something happened it was by someone who had no stake in the main tension. For example there was a lot of tension in Dallas in 1963 and a lot of hatred of Kennedy over integration and over communism. We know this because the historical record indicates that people were worried about the President visitng Dallas and other officials encountered problems. Yet when the shooting actually happened it wasn't from someone defending Jim Crow or someone outraged over the Bay of Pigs but by someone who appears to have been angry that JFK was too anti-communist. In other words someone who took an action that seemed to fit with the atmosphere but had a motive that was different from the atmosphere.
Likewise RFK's killer didn't care much about civil rights or the Vietnam War but about supporting Israel, which few people were passionate about at the time and wasn't a policy that was esp. associated with RFK. No one was shocked that someone would shoot Martin Luther King Jr. but one would have expected his killer to be a racist, yet James Earl Ray never seemed to have any notable racial beliefs about MLK.
Briefly, we have periods in our history where you'd expect some assassinations and we get assassinations during those periods but the people who committ them seem to have motivations that are oddly out of sync with what one would expect.
This isn't perfect of course. Tim McVeigh, for example, seemed in tenor with his times (the black helicopter crowd with a hard on for the BATF and Waco) and had a motive in sync too.
This lends support to the following hypothesis that's both good and bad. The good is that even with highly emotional issues, most Americans trust the 'system' implicitly and are loyal to it. Unlike some other countries where a political disagreement can easily lead to people setting off bombs, most Americans will respect the law and system. They will not blow up the court house if abortion is ruled legal or same sex marriage recognized. They don't attack immigration detention centers and free illegal immigrants if the Dream Act is defeated in Congress. Despite heated rhetoric, Americans mostly will not resort to violence when it comes to the stuff they get heated about.
The bad news is that the heated rhetoric does act as a 'dog whistle' to crazies. If you say that '2nd amendment remedies' may be needed if the health bill passes, people who hate the bill aren't going to shoot anyone. But the guy who thinks the gov't is controlling his mind through the neighbors dog may start thinking a '2nd amendment remedy' is an idea worth considering. Now before you dismiss this as just a way to justify blaming Sarah Palin, it really is bad news since it means that we can't expect to stop assassins by looking at the places we'd expect them to come from. The blog full of people saying arms should be taken up over health care aren't quite as likely to produce a terrorist but the nutcase huddled in his mom's basement who is totally incoherent but can pick up on the 'spirits' of his time will do something.
On “A Closer Look at Jared Lee Loughner”
Again behavior often reveals more truth than words.
As soon as this happened, a lot of the right immediately recognized that they should move away from the rhetoric. Why? Because they knew. As was pointed out, as soon as the sheriff made his statement, the AZ Tea Party went ballistic. Why? He never singled out the right? Because they knew.
Now tomorrow if you read that someone got raped in the park near you, you're probably not going to erase TheHun from your browsing history. While porn might be analogous it's only partially so.
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Most people require some regular form of sexual release. Do most people also need to call for '2nd amendment remedies' on a regular basis? Are you saying the right is just a form of mass intellectual masturbation?
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"But what if they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by pulling back? Again, the point is that unfairly associating them with the attack validates the very rhetoric they use and that you are criticizing them for using. "
How does it validate the rhetoric? Let's say I go around saying the President should be shoot for continuing an illegal war in Afghanistan. Then one day someone actually shoots the president. People look at me and say I should knock off that bullshit. But then it comes out that the guy who shot the President did it not because he hated the war in Afghanistan but because he thought Spongebob Squarepants was telling him to do it from the TV. How am I now 'validated'?
"You ignore the possibility that they actually feel like liberals are out to get them, and actually believe the sentiments behind their statements , even if they’re hyperbolic about the extent to which they feel that."
So they get a pass because they insist on having paranoid feelings? How about expecting them to can the paranoia in addition to canning the rhetoric?
"It’s been said many times that this past Congress was remarkably successful in passing its agenda, and that much of that agenda was quite ambitious and definitely not remotely consonant with movement conservatism"
And the Congress before that approved the Iraq War, passed massive tax cuts & created Medicare Part D which was Bush's idea. Last time I checked the last Congress was there because they won an election just like the Congress before that.
"Given those facts, it should not be remotely surprising that anger and fear on the Right is at an all time high, regardless of whether it’s misplaced. "
Whether or not its misplaced is irrelevant. Those who are angry or fearful do not get an excuse. If you're touting '2nd amendment remedies' you should be booted off the stage and I don't care if you say it because you're cynically trying to score votes or if you're honestly angry and fearful.
"The one small good thing that could have come out of this attack would be for the Right to recognize the basic humanity of the Left and that, because of that humanity, maybe the Left really isn’t out to get them. "
And why would that come out of this attack? Because when you don't respect the basic humanity of the people you disagree with you lower the barriers against things like this happening. But as far as the left goes, having the right recognize its 'basic humanity' is not a negotiating point or a 'nice to have'. It's expected to be a default position and the left should angrily demand it, not ask for it politely as if its some type of favor. If the right is so emotionally immature that it cannot grant this unless people come begging on their knees then we have a very serious problem in this country.
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1. I don't think violent rhetoric is really just like porn.
2. The question isn't whether or not there was violent rhetoric in the 60's when there were more political assassinations, the question is would the 60's have been less or more violent if more people in repectable positions had flirted with violence.
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We may never know. Maybe if there was *more* extreme rhetoric in the air he would have shot no one and instead buried himself in his moms basement making youtube videos and writing thousand page books about the evils of 'mind control grammer'.
But in general a good case is there that violent rhetoric does not help just as wearing seat belts helps lower car crash deaths. It may well be that this doesn't apply to one particular shooting or car crash, the opposite may even apply in particular cases but as a rule I think this should be taken as a warning.
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I think you're being a bit too coy here. The unabomber does appear to be a case of a crazy person doing something for a crazy reason that's barely a reason. Tim McVeigh, though, does not. He seemed to have a very clear, very definate reason and I think he was quite sane. His moral calculations were evil but he was under no delusions IMO.
Now I think its fair to say that some of the rhetoric at that time was over the top and wrong. Does that mean if people were more restrained when going on about Waco that McVeigh wouldn't have done what he did? No, he might have anyway. But like I said if your house has bad wiring you don't make the problem worse by smoking in bed with a bucket of gas in the bedroom.
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I don't buy that the shooter was totally uneffected by the rhetorical environment. When you have the idea in the air that the gov't is illegitimate, that force may be necessary to right things if elections don't work, there's no reason to think this message doesn't travel. Recall Keynes's well known quote:
"Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."
Madmen can also distill in their frenzy ideas being articulated by the mainstream political discourse. If shooting is a possible response to the healthcare mandate then why not a response to 'mind control by grammer'?
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By 'take control' I mean win the mid-term election. It was a historic win after all since the Dems had the House for decades. If over the top rhetoric back then was due to feeling powerless that should have helped a lot. What more could they have reasonably asked for? Have the states pass a Constitutional amendment ousting Clinton two years into his first term and installing Bob Dole as President?
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Even if they didn't actually take over congress yet one would think that the 'feeling powerless' would have at least been partially dispelled by taking control of not one but both houses of Congress. I think there is something odd about the way Republicans view the White House, it's almost as if they feel entitled to it at all times and if they don't get it they veer towards the nutty zone. But they are more apt to cede Congress to Democrats without feeling as they the country's been 'stolen' from them.
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My question to you then is: so why pin the blame on them unfairly? If they pull back, isn’t it likely that they did so in spite of being blamed unfairly, and that being blamed unfairly will decrease the amount they pull back?
I agree they shouldn't be blamed unfairly. Like I said, if someone wants to show up at a Sarah Palin speech with a sign that says "You have blood on your hands" I think that's unfair. If they want to say Engle should have said "2nd amendment remedy" I'd agree. If they want to say she facilitated murder I'd say that's wrong.
If they 'decrease the amount they pull back' because some on the left unfairly blame them....well they should know two wrongs don't make a right and if they don't know it then they should be booted out of respectable discourse.
In terms of why they pulled back....well we don't know but you know I do think its interesting that a lot of people had an 'ohhh shit' reaction when they first heard about the shooting and I'm sure the first thought that leaped into their head was something coming from the right. There's a reason for that, it fits the picture and makes sense and the reason it does is because the rhetoric and antics have been ripe for a while now.
Now it appears that it didn't go down that way. That's not unprecedented. In '63 there was a lot of fear about JFK visiting Dallas and when it happened the assumption was something from the right. But God enjoys making fun of assumptions and it turned out that Oswald was, if anything, coming at JFK from the left.
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Likewise I disagree its about two wrongs making a right. My point is that giving the right a pass on the gounds that we see no clear connection to this psychotic killer is not justified and wouldn't be appreciated by the right. Being that such rhetoric is over the line it should be criticizied and when a good illustration appears it should be used.
Returning to the analogy of your firend getting killed in a car crash, you'd use that to illustrate the need to be safer to your kids even if that particular crash couldn't have been avoided. There's no good reason to assume that nutcases who do things like phone in death threats over '2nd amendment remedies' rhetoric would never go a step beyond that.
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I would say an illustration may be a better phrase to use than a connection.
Your dates are backwards in regards to the Republicans 'calming down' after taking the Congress rather than as a result of the OK city bombing. The bombing was in 95, the Republican Revolution was 94. Helms's infamous statement about Clinton needing a bodyguard if he ever came to his state was in Nov of 94. Winning the Senate and House didn't seem to have been sufficient to 'calm him down'. AFter the OK bombing, though, Helms did calm down a bit even though Tim McVeigh's obsessions over Waco were not shared as much by Helms. He nonetheless saw the unwisdom of continuing on as usual with the 'illustration' of what can happen when you encourage such things.
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Was he referring to a show where Bill Mahr said that if capitalists succeeded in getting social security turned into a 401K type system someone should apply a '2nd amendment remedy' to downtown Manhatten? If so he was right.
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