Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it. Warren is criticized by the Right for obvious reasons, given her strong stances on managing the economy and controlling the excesses of the Corporate Culture. In a sense she offends their sense of political purity, but then that is but a given because she is a Democrat. We have seen though on the Right that such conservative stalwarts as Richard Lugar have gone down to primary defeat because he failed the Tea Parties test of what a “true” conservative should be. Richard Lugar failed the “purity” test even though his conservative history is impeccable. In my conception political purity conforms to “party line” thinking, punishing those that fail to adhere in all respects to the standards of a given faction’s concept of standards their candidates must adhere to in order to retain enthusiastic support. I use “faction”, rather than “party”, because our two party political system actually represents an amalgam of various factions imperfectly coalescing under the rubric of a “Political Party”.
From a Left, or even Centrist perspective, there has been both amusement and trepidation about how the “Tea Party” faction has exerted control over the Republican Party. Then too, there is the same reaction to the power exerted by Fundamentalist Christians, a group that at some points overlaps with the “Tea Party”. A human trait is to see the foibles of groups we define as “other”, while being oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of the groups we are aligned with. Liberals, Progressives, Radicals and even Leftist Centrists like to believe that they are immune from the turmoil that they see in their Right Wing opposites, yet the “Left” and even the “Center” also routinely define people in terms of litmus tests of political purity. This was highlighted by certain comments on the Warren thread where people who were seemingly in tune with her domestic policy views, disliked her positions on the Middle East and appeared to hold them against her. This has definitely been true with many progressives and/or civil libertarians in viewing this current Administration. My purpose here is not one of castigation for anyone’s perspective; rather I’m interested in exploring the phenomenon of the belief that political figures need to meet all of our expectations in their positions, or be unworthy of our support. My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate. The process of real negotiation requires compromise. What follows is why I believe that is true. Before my discussion though, I think a definition of perspectives would be helpful. There are some of us, including myself to a certain degree, who believe that we are living under a corporate oligarchy and as such the common pretense that our national fate is in the hands of the majority’s vote, is but pleasant mythology. I wrote about this in my guest blog Published 1, March 17, 2012: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/ .One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing. My own conclusion is not quite there yet, even though I do believe that we are under the rule of a coalition of the Military Industrial Complex and of the Corporate Elite. The redeeming feature to me is that I don’t believe in the homogeneity of the “ruling classes”. I think that they are made up of various factions and roiled by clashing egos. In my estimation voting for politicians thus has value because the vote affects the competition among our oligarchs. There is a qualitative difference for instance between Buffett/Gates and the Koch Brothers, in the sense that the former believe in more humane social policies and the latter have a draconian social view.
If one believes that Democracy is completely illusory, then why bother voting, since voting is a futile exercise? The logical conclusion of such a belief is to disdain all of American politics and politicians as being tools of the Oligarchy. From that perspective it isn’t a question of particular policy, since almost every player in normative politics is not to be trusted. So the question becomes how do the people change things when the political process is believed to be non-existent? Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent? While I know there are “militias” out in the hills of places like Idaho, are they capable of banding together to overthrow our current government, I think not. Violent revolutions always seem to breed unforeseen and unpleasant excesses, which make their original aims moot. So the question becomes how do we effect a peaceful revolution? The answer is simple, but the process itself is immensely complex. A peaceful revolution can come about when you are able to convince an overwhelming majority of the people that the current system needs change and that they need to refuse to cooperate with it. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the media is in the hands of corporations though, the issue is one of how does the message of change come across to reach the populace? It’s a question I’ve pondered for years.
Back in the 60’s there was the idea of “dropping out” of a corrupt system. Its problem was that it was espoused by many and practiced by few. The truth was that for those “dropping out” the system didn’t miss their participation, nor would it now. A current conservative stratagem is to make voting harder, thereby limiting turnout of voters negative to their cause. We solve nothing by not voting. We could vote, but cast our votes for nascent opposition parties. This is not a bad premise in my estimation, even though in our loaded political system, minority party effectiveness is more limited than under parliamentary government. Let us think though about a minority party legislator’s ability to be effective once elected, since I assume that the process of gaining political power through organizing a minority party opposition would be slow and could be violently opposed. Think of the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street. However, OWS does show that the elite can feel threatened by a mass movement.
When we discuss the election of someone whose political views are outside of what the “mainstream allows”, we need to take into account how much positive influence they can have on the political process, if they are unwilling to compromise their “political purity”. Let us take the real instance of Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, as he does his job in the Senate. I believe that Bernie is the most ethical and perceptive Senator we have had in the Senate in a long time. He is also an effective Senator in terms of being able to not only put forth a progressive point of view, but to actually influence Senate activity. In order to be effective in the Senate, Bernie has had to compromise on certain issues and thus would certainly be seen from the orthodox socialist perspective to have sold out. In contrast let us take another man whose career I’ve admired, Dennis Kucinich. Dennis has been an aggressive/effective spokesman on a national level for unpopular, yet valid causes. Within the house though he has not been able to effectuate change simply because Dennis does not do compromise well
In today’s world a political change process is mainly effectuated in four ways:
1. Violent revolution, which is highly problematic at best.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based
upon the right circumstances.
3. Organizing and creating an opposition political movement, a possibly fruitful, yet hard process to carry
out with success..
4. Working within the system, imperfect as it may be, to effect slow change.
All of the above can be work to effect change in a given context, but one factor is a given no matter which method is chosen. To build a mass movement in a diverse population the need to compromise is paramount. This need to compromise is called “coalition building”. The Right has been effective at this for years when you think of the coalition between religious fundamentalists, lukewarm objectivists and outright corporatists. What would Jesus, Ayn Rand and even Adam Smith think of the ways their teachings have been presumably melded? In the past the Left also coalesced around certain issues, bringing together groups that were hardly homogeneous. However, from the 60’s onward building of coalitions on the Left has broken down. “Centrists” and “Liberals” became anathema to “progressives” and “radicals”. After all that he had accomplished Martin Luther King became an “Uncle Tom” in the minds of “Black Power” advocates for his refusal to entertain the concept of violence as a tool.
The Left coalition also began to break down in the 60’s over the issue of Viet Nam. Working class union members generally supported the war that was drafting and killing their children. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, who had striven to disassociate themselves from Marxism during the McCarthy era, had become part of the country’s establishment. As George Meany, the AFL-CIO President, began to play golf with Eisenhower and major industrialists, the Union movement swung away from its Left Wing roots. The fact that the labor movement was overwhelmingly “white working class” in an era where Blacks were demanding equal status also took its toll on the coalition between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters supported Richard Nixon in 1968..
The labor movement’s departure from coalition with the Democratic Party was to have devastating consequences for its strength. Their workers, doing well financially aspired to a scaled down version of the American Dream. The threat that competition with Blacks for jobs and with the Left’s critique of muscular foreign policy, helped drive white workers into the Republican Party. The fact that their leadership had become cozy with Management and Republicans led the way. The power of the labor movement waned until today it is a shadow of what it once was. The Left coalition forged under FDR and informed experientially by the “Great Depression”, began to fight amongst themselves. The battles increasingly became issues of “purity of political belief”. When a person’s political value is weighed on only specific issues that are politically “black and white”, coalition becomes almost impossible. Without the ability to coalesce “Movements” face severe limitations in their ability to grow.
I believe that in the desire for reforming our governance to work for the interests of all the people, all viable methods must be used. Of the four methods I list above I believe that only the latter three are really viable. A violent revolution in this country will only hasten the totality of oppression, since violent revolutions never seem to work out the way people have planned and that the people once having risen find themselves ruled harshly by those they so hopefully followed. Refute this premise if you will, but please don’t cite the American Revolution. While it certainly had violence it was a rebellion of colonies against an overseas colonial state. By revolution I mean the rebellion of a people in a certain geographical area against their own government.
Methodologically, none of the three methods can work without bringing together people of differing standards via a coalition that accepts deviation from a “party line”. This seems obvious to me since rarely do those who wish change agree on all issues. Are there “deal breakers” that cannot brook compromise? That depends upon the individual, the perceived threat and the current circumstance. I have my own deal breakers, certainly, but I invoke them in context of my reading of the perceived threat.
What do you the reader think of the argument I’ve made? If you disagree please let me know, since I understand that on any given subject I can be wrong and I am really willing to learn. If you agree with me then what are your “deal breakers”? Perhaps if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Bron,
Considering how often you come up with things from questionable sources like Ayn Rand, the WSJ and von Mises organelles, I wouldn’t exactly call what you’ve found “the real truth.” You’ve demonstrated time and again that you are logic and evidence resistant past your self-imposed ideological boundaries and tend to think “the real truth” is whatever plays to your confirmation bias(es). That’s what happens when you adopt an ideology without question instead of letting your questions and the best evidence you find in pursuit of those questions (no matter where they lead you; evidence informs theory, theories don’t inform evidence) inform your operational principles that you define rather than let the operating principles others dictate define you for you. Operational principles that may and often do play to the that person’s specific agenda which may or may not be in your best interests. You may criticism the syncretic approach to philosophy and ethics, but in fact, it grants me greater freedom than your dogmatic approach and absolutisms. Dogmatic adherence to any single system is a hobble no matter if your system is defined by Rand, Kant or Jesus. No one system is perfect and must have an assumed truth somewhere in it and assumptions – even if correct – can lead you further astray than a fact ever will. That is one of the beauties of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. They point to the flaw in acting as if any single system is consistent and perfectly factually valid. You may be thankful for things you’ve learned from me, but you have failed to learn the most valuable lessons of all: let evidence inform your theories – not dogma, above all think critically and for yourself and to realize that no one system has all the answers.
Perhaps it is your inability to think outside the binary box is physically based. I’d like to think it is merely a bad choice on your part but as time goes on, maybe that freedom of thought I wish for you simply isn’t possible. The primary difference between you and skip – given that you are both dogmatically Libertarian and in your case Randian Objectivist by choice – is that I think you have the ability to think for yourself, but you are simply either too lazy or fearful to follow the small “o” objective evidence and arguments to their natural logical conclusions. You stop yourself from learning better and I think it is by choice even if that choice is subconscious. You can learn and learn things contrary to some of your preconceptions. I and others here have seen you do it up to and until it runs afoul of your dogmas. Your ignorance is often willful even when it is subconsciously driven. That is very often the nature of confirmation bias. Skip on the other hand simply doesn’t seem to be very intelligent on top of being poorly informed. I suspect he simply can’t learn well. All men are created equal, but they are not all created equally.
And that is my teacher’s lament on and to you.
You have potential to much more intelligent and better informed and you waste it on dogma and the triteness of propaganda that plays against your interests and the interests of society as a whole. You may have learned information from me, but you haven’t learned the lesson and the knowledge that goes with it. By being dogmatic and absolutist, you use information to chain yourself and limit your perception of the vast tapestry of nature. It’s not all straight lines and black and white. It’s wiggly and full of many colors of many shades.
Free your mind. Without that critical step? You will never be truly free.
You can do it, Bobby Boucher.
There’s even a frog muffin in it for you if you succeed.
But you have to let go of Ayn and von Mises shackles first.
You should try reading “Free To Choose” by Milton and Rose Friedman.They won the Nobel Prize in economics for this book. He was a student of the folks you criticized in your post. You are amazingly critical of what you appear to know nothing about. Your sociological babble may to impressive to those who don’t know any better, but it doesn’t fly with us. You’ve given me one reference so far and it was something you wrote that is dead wrong. You wouldn’t even use your own logic to answer basic social questions that I posed. Your acting like a fraud or perhaps a political operative.
Bron,
Are you intellectual? Doubt it. I have to agree that promoting voting is the best approach. Wisconsin tried and lost. But they didn’t really lose.
@skiprob: you and Gene cannot come up with “rational means” of improving the system.
Actually, I suspect Gene and I would do just fine on the rational front. The rational front is not the problem, the irrational front is. That it you and your Aynish kin, the irrational religious, the irrational “conservatives,” the irrationally apathetic, the irrationally greedy, the irrationally deferent to fame, fortune and power, and those that irrationally crave to be subjects of royalty.
The rational front does not make something complex out of something simple, it outlaws and severely punishes sociopathic behavior. In fact, the rational front would pass just enough regulation and law so that all the wonderful magical things you claim for the free market would actually come to pass.
We would ensure that companies can only compete on price, quality, service, cachet, guarantees and safety, and prohibit them from influencing politics, endangering their customers or the environment or their employees, defrauding their investors, or making false claims or breaking their contracts and agreements.
In fact, it is irrational of YOU to deny us those regulations, because if you truly believed in your failed ideology, such regulations would be entirely neutral, no companies would engage in underhanded practice, or poisoning of their customers or employees. What possible rational reason is there to permit a food company to poison their customers, or a factory to expose workers to carcinogenic radiation without even telling them about it?
You Aynish are the irrational breed, because if businesses acted as you claimed, these laws would not exist, they are overwhelmingly passed in response to the outrage caused by the commission of the very acts they outlaw.
The rational people know exactly how to fix the problem, we are thwarted by the irrational people like you.
Ah, I see that you do not understand that most regulation is really created to stifle competition so that it can be used by the oligarchy to gain further controls over the means of production. It allows them to know every single bsuiness activity that is going on. Why do you think they also pushed so hard to maintain a central bank and get it back after Jackson killed the 2nd Bank of the United States? It helps them to control the various industries and therefore consolidate their financial interests. The Creature From Jeckyl Island is about the true story of the secret meeting in Jeckyl Island, GA where the Morgans, Rothchilds and the Gov. planned in 1911 the enactment of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Facinating book, you boys should trying reading something useful.
Matt Johnson:
I am ass? Why do you say that? You are the one that said public schools started giving free lunches because the cannon fodder wasnt big enough and well nourished enough.
That is the thing with big government, that is how they think of the citizens, as cannon fodder. They own us or so they think, the government is going to find out they dont.
Mike Spindell:
I am all for helping people as long as they arent able to help themselves. The severly disabled both physical and intellectual come readily to mind. Most other people can work and should, they arent my responsibility. Why should I pay for some one who can work and doesnt because they want to suck on the government teat instead?
skiprob:
have you ever heard of P.E.T.R.?
people for the ethical treatment of rodents. DC is a charter member, they trap rats and send them across the river to Virginia. They have a law in DC preventing the destruction of rats.
“Here is a good article philosophically speeking which addresses altruism I am sure you will love it:”
Bron,
This is another example of your obtuseness when it comes to anyone who disagrees with you, you read what you imagine, rather than what is written. In all the years we’ve exchanged comments I have consistently told you that I’m not an altruist and I don’t believe in altruism. Caring for the lives of others is not altruism, it is intelligence. You, however, are so caught up in your own selfish purposes that you need to defame others as “altruists” because you cannot understand that as members of a society we are better off caring for all the people, rather than retreating solely into our own selfish interests as you do.
skiprob,
Maybe it’s time to stop being insane. Wisconsin voters tried. No wasted effort.
Any legislation can be easily be trumped by the Judiciary. Anything of importance generally is. That’s why I keep saying to even libertarians – You are not going to change the system using the system controlled by the very people who are our adversaries. You haven’t got enough money and time. I don’t care how many Rand and Ron Pauls get elected. You aren’t going to beat them at the game the control and you’re not going to take their controls away.
Bron 1, June 6, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Matt Johnson:
I guess they succeeded too well since there is an obesity epidemic now. Or maybe people werent undernourished and it was just a ploy to expand government yet again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What is that supposed to mean? You’re an ass. When I was in boot camp the fat guys either made it or they didn’t.
“Also you continue to use terms like plutocracy and autocracy that are passé in economics.”
Skip,
Seriously? Who has defined them as passe’? Both you and Bron are plagued by believing that which is not there. You have characterized Gene, Tony and myself with silly labels that are the product of your own imaginations. You see the world through the fogged lens of your political perspective. Any fair examinations of the writing of Tony, Gene and myself is that we are not at all doctrinaire “leftists” by any means. Yet you are so rigidly locked into your beliefs that you are unable to perceive it.
Criticize and Deny, Critciize and Deny.
It is interesting to note that the below analysis does appear to also relate to our democratic republic today. – Exactly what I’ve been saying and understanding that the two party system is really a two-headed snake is important.
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage..”
The Obituary follows:
Born 1776, Died 20….
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul ,
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
“complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.
Gene H:
I am glad you did, it is only fair for all of the knowledge I have gained reading what you wrote and then researching and finding the real truth.
You are more than welcome, the pleasure has been all mine.
I think it is in the book The Voluntary City, where competing judicial systems were utilized in the Celtic civilization, which worked well until the fascist Roman Empire, as they did throughout the world, invaded them. Now that we know how to stop invasions, perhaps we should try improving our judicial system again.
“Tony C and Gene H are totalitarians at heart.”
I don’t consider wanting justice for all, a peaceful society that provides mutual defense and promotes the welfare of its citizens while maintaining the maximum possible individual liberty to be totalitarian but if that makes me totalitarian, well . . .
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m in good company.
That and you have as little understanding of the political science term “totalitarian” as you do of the word “socialism”.
Totalitarianism is a system characterized centralized control by an autocratic authority and the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority where as I favor a system of checks and balances that serves to protect the civil rights of citizens from abuses by each other and by the government itself through an independent judciaty and a government that is democratic in form which means that absolute authority rests in the people and not the state.
Which means I’m the exact opposite of totalitarian.
And I’ll enjoy my laugh at your expense just as much as all the others I have at your expense, no more – no less.
@Bron: I am not a totalitarian, I believe in majority rule. You and all of the Aynish are totalitarians, you are the ones that would deny a 99% majority that wanted to impose a regulation on business or a tax on income, on asinine Aynish principle. What could be more totalitarian than imposing a literally life threatening philosophy of a tiny little minority on the vast majority?
Tony, The status Quo is not working and you and Gene cannot come up with “rational means” of improving the system. You think the magic majority is all of a sudden going to agree on doing something using the political system to improve the system. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and expecting different results.
Gene H:
yes, I went back and read one of your reading comprehension slights so consider me chastised.
Sorry about that, accusing you of poor reading comprehension.
Have your laugh, I did.
Malisha:
in regards to Tony C and guns, he is saying we have to kill the patient to save the patient.
God damn it we are going to tyrannize you so you will god damn well be free from tyranny.
Tony C and Gene H are totalitarians at heart. Its kinda cute actually. Just picture Marx and Lenin in baby diapers with big adult heads and little baby bodies running around shouting proletarians of the world unite [or we will use a gun and make you]. Make sure it is a high squeaky voice for maximum effect.
@Malisha: The government has to use coercive power to make people obey laws. A metaphor for that is “gunpoint,” laws are enforced at gunpoint. Of course, there are things like a police order or fines, but ultimately, the law is designed to escalate from a refusal to obey an order to ultimately physically coercive action with lethality if need be.
If there ARE no laws, and no regulation, then the result is anarchy. The only protection you HAVE is force, or, in the metaphor, a gun. That is all that protects you from theft, murder, rape, enslavement, etc.
There are bad actors in the world, sociopaths and psychopaths without empathy or remorse that understand nothing but force. They are not rare; they comprise around 1% or 2% of the population. Government must control them with force, or they will control us by force.
There is simply no escaping that dilemma, force is a necessity. Of the two options, controlled force is the preferable option, which means government controlled by the people that uses force in proportions determined by the people to be fair and just.
“I was talking about John Agresto’s column.”
So was I.
I was critical of both what he said and how he said it.
Mike was critical of the man as an unreliable source of information, i.e. attacking his credibility as a witness.
There is some problem with reading comprehension here, but it is most assuredly not mine.
Now tell us again how the messenger (you as the propagator of Agresto’s propaganda) was attacked.
If the ideas are so bad then refute them.
Gene H:
I was talking about John Agresto’s column.
What do you always say about reading comprehension? Just go back and read one of your statements to any of a number of different people on the subject and consider it from me. You will probably find it under your macro for reading comprehension maybe ctrl+shift rdcmp?