Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
One of the sad lessons one learns, if they live long enough, is that permanency is an illusion. There was a time when most Conservatives in the United States actually cared about the country and its’ people. It’s not that I’m wistful for some bygone era that exists only in my mind, because I’m well aware that the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s were tumultuous times for many including myself. Nor do I have any great love for Dwight Eisenhower and/or Barry Goldwater who I did not vote for in 1964. Yet with all their conservative beliefs, these were men who actually understood something about the needs of people and the motives of some who would call themselves religious leaders. Many of us who have lived long lives remember when the public political discussion in this country contained actual, factual debate, containing depth of ideas, rather than the invective we hear today. The Republicans of the Eisenhower era understood that there was a social contract that existed in this country to ensure that there was a healthy, financially flourishing Middle Class, which is the engine that drives a prosperous modern society. Also Barry Goldwater, who was known as “Mr. Conservative” understood the danger that the Religious hucksters had for his party and the necessity of politicians to compromise. He would ridicule those prominent politicians in his party who would reject the ideas of evolution and blind themselves to science. He also really did believe that government had no business prying into essentially private matters. I disagreed with him on most things, but I at least could respect him, which I can’t do for many prominent politicians of today.
What happened? You know I’ve written about my theories in many of my guest blogs, what are yours?
Tony C, thanks for your comment about this issue with the Zimmerman case. It makes me want to point out why I am so focused in on this particular “story versus story” issue with respect to that case.
The first thing most people read when the story went national was that a Neighborhood Watch “Captain” had killed an unarmed Black youth in a gated community where there had been a lot of crime recently. Then the police were not suspected of being bad guys when they stood up for the shooter, saying he acted in self-defense. The entire perception of the case rested on the phrase “eight burglaries, nine thefts and ONE OTHER SHOOTING in the year before Trayvon Martin was killed.” The ONE OTHER SHOOTING was the most important piece of data in that story.
Naturally the guy was on guard for trouble; there had been a shooting!
There was no other shooting.
And now, the journalist who wrote that story, cited and quoted over a thousand times on the web, does not answer my calls or e-mails when I provide absolutely undeniable information that there had not been ANY OTHER SHOOTING in RTL in the year before Trayvon Martin was killed.
We are constantly being sold a bill of goods.
We can never tease out REAL INFORMATION from the crap we read.
We are treated like little kindergarten kids who need to be manipulated and controlled or we’ll mess up and get run over by a car.
This one piece of wrong data has had me in quite a tizz for about three weeks; before I get this covered in the meanstream press I’m sure I’ll spend 100 hours and $1,000 and even IF THEN it gets covered, not very well. Yet to me, it is a big big story. It is the story of our own misunderstanding of our own situation. Which could not be more dangerous, could not be more problematic, could not be more important.
@Mike: To be clear, my support of Ron Paul was strictly as the only chance left to avoid the establishment of an Imperial Presidency, which I believe became inevitable the moment Romney became the Republican Party candidate. (i.e. it would not matter who won.)
At this point, I do not believe any of our Constitutional rights are safe, or even exist. All of the civil rights violations of Bush/Cheney and now Obama are now bi-partisan established modus operandi for the rest of our lives, and I predict they will be escalated further. Whatever “good” Obama may now do while in office comes at the expense of freedom of speech, our rights to privacy, our rights to private communications, our rights to be free from unwarranted search or eavesdropping by the government, our rights to due process, even our right to life itself.
Something else that I must mention regarding partisanship. For the most part I loathe Marxists/Communists, for much the same reason that I loathe the extremists of the Conservative and Tea Bag movements. They too are just as doctrinaire and authoritarian as their opponents on the Right. My life experience is such that I actually did battle with them in the union movement in the late 60’s and was called at the time “A running dog of capitalism”. Yes many Marxists are easily distinguished by the same rigidity of thought exhibited by Right Wing Authoritarians and we even have one writing here known as Karl Friederich. If you think the problem is one of doctrine, then to me you’re part of the problem.
Malisha has a point; a burglary that results in a theft may be charged as two crimes, but that sounds like two incidents when it is really a single incident, and incidents are what matter to most people. The average person assumes a report of a burglary is an implicit report of a theft. So reporting two or more crimes for a single incident (breaking and entering, theft, vandalism, destruction of private property!) is misleading and inflates the perception of crime in a neighborhood.
Also, of course, if the media reported prior potentially lethal violent crime where there was none that is extremely misleading.
@Ariel: Nick S. is just reminding us.
No, Nick was insinuating I was characterizing Conservatives without knowing any or socializing with any. Which is simply untrue.
I am sure there are fiscally conservative and socially liberal voters out there; but they aren’t part of the Conservative movement; because social issues trump fiscal issues every time. Nobody is out there saying, “I am pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gay military, I believe in good public education, student loans, welfare and health care for the poor, but I will throw all those people under the bus to give millionaires a 3% tax cut.”
Conservatives in America are primarily social Conservatives; to the extent they are involved in fiscal matters it is about cutting what they perceive to be social programs. They don’t want to touch the military. Just look at Romney’s secretly-taped speech: They want to stop the moochers: That means the social programs that benefit the poor.
@Ariel: this is one of the best I’ve seen across many posts: …
“Respect those who seek the truth, doubt those who state they have found it.”
Really? When I see somebody engaged in an activity where I do not think they can succeed, and indeed would doubt any results they produced, my first instinct is not “respect” but “pity” that they waste their time in a pointless pursuit.
The point of including that line is to cast aspersions on my characterization of Conservatives as reverent of hierarchy; which I gather has irked Nick.
Yet that is the distinguishing feature of Conservatism in the USA. Conservatives really do like these ordered pyramidal organizations, they like the idea of the steely-eyed man-in-charge making the hard decisions. The evidence for that is everywhere; I did not pull that rabbit out of a top hat, I gather that from innumerable conversations with them.
They like the hierarchy, they like “leadership.” They like the metaphorical steely-eyed wise man at the top making the brave hard decisions after praying to the ultimate CEO of tough decisions for sacred guidance. They like the certainty that implies, so they can follow orders without question. Our infallible General knows what we must do to save America, and we follow his (or His) orders no matter what the personal consequences.
If you do not think that is true, tell us what you think defines Conservative belief that makes it distinct from Liberal belief. I suppose I could make a case for greed and selfishness, but I think those spring from this reverence for hierarchy, ironclad rules and order.
“I am sure there are fiscally conservative and socially liberal voters out there; but they aren’t part of the Conservative movement”
Tony,
Quite correct, these days such people are considered libertarian, which is how Nick and Ariel appear to characterize themselves. The argument that Nick was
using against you was “subtle” in that it implies something like “all sides have their good and bad so we must’t categorize and label”. This is actually a variant of the chief conservative answer to exposure of corruption in their own ranks which is “everybody” does it. The truth is that there are definable characteristics of those on all parts of the political spectrum. To bleach those distinctions out via a seeming call to “bonhomie” is to ignore a reality that is the problem in the first instance.
“The point of including that line is to cast aspersions on my characterization of Conservatives as reverent of hierarchy; which I gather has irked Nick.”
I agree that this was Nicks’ aim and that it characterizes Nick’s approach to many
threads in argumentation. Nick is into the use of argument by connotation, rather than directly contesting any issue. The problem is that he isn’t quite subtle enough in his style, so it is plain where he is really taking his argument. None of his comments on this thread, thus far, have really dealt with the question I raised in the post which is specifically has’t there been a radical change to the Right in mainstream “Conservative” thinking? Ariel too begs the question when he writes:
“The problem of course is when we so magnify the differences that we forget the commonalities. Nick S. is just reminding us.
M. S. could surely as easily write a column today on how different liberals, or Democrats, are now from Roosevelt, Truman, JFK, or LBJ.”
I agree that I could just as easily note the difference twixt FDR, etc. and Democrats/Liberals today. However, that is endemic in my column above and also in too many columns and comments in the past to delineate here. That this country has been shifted radically “rightward” has been an ongoing theme of all my political writing. Moreover, it is an indisputable fact that can be proven. This article exists in that continuum to starkly show how these changes have affected the American conservative movement, which has been in the vanguard of this
“Rightward Shift”.
As to the “commonalities” of which Nick and Ariel so blithely state, yes we are all oxygen breathing human beings, some good, some bad, irrespective of our political beliefs. However, to put it into these terms serve not to enlighten, but to cover up serious differences that put this country into its’ current precarious position. As you put it so well”
“Yet that is the distinguishing feature of Conservatism in the USA. Conservatives really do like these ordered pyramidal organizations, they like the idea of the steely-eyed man-in-charge making the hard decisions. The evidence for that is everywhere”
“They like the hierarchy, they like “leadership.” They like the metaphorical steely-eyed wise man at the top making the brave hard decisions after praying to the ultimate CEO of tough decisions for sacred guidance. They like the certainty that implies, so they can follow orders without question.”
To paper over this distinctive feature of the conservative movement in America is like flying blind in discourse. There are numerous studies of a scientific nature that have proven this time and again. Indeed I wrote about just such a study and offered a link to the free publication of it, last January in “The Authoritarians, A book Review and a Book”: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/21/the-authoritarians-a-book-review-and-book/
To discuss the American political scene today, without understanding that the mindset of people of differing political views, shapes the ability to both debate and compromise would be a foolish endeavor. I think though that both nick and Ariel labor under the delusion that both of us, JT and many others here are partisans on the political spectrum. This is the mistake commonly made by both conservatives and libertarians in confronting people who disagree with them. They have a tendency to project upon them labels that have the timeworn use of besmirching political iconoclasm, by affirming it in the Left of the political spectrum. Personally, I abjure and distrust any “ism” and have explained my reasons on many occasions. Since both of them are relatively new to this blog, they also are unaware of the many arguments you and I engaged in because you preferred Ron Paul to Barack Obama. Neither of us represents a the standard partisan outlook, yet I think that this is how both Nick and Ariel would like to characterize us and thus ignore refuting the merits of our varied arguments.
Ariel, BUT the newspaper article reported “eight burglaries, nine thefts and one other shooting.” That was echoed all over the web (and in print media) for two weeks and it was pointed out that the statistics showed that to be a “high crime neighborhood,” thus providing a less bizarre story for why George Zimmerman would be prowling around with a loaded gun looking for “suspects.” The truth of the report was that there was NO OTHER SHOOTING — and that is the most important piece of the real story — NO OTHER SHOOTING — and if you take ONLY the year before the event you end up with 7 burglaries, 8 thefts (one of them was out of someone’s handbag by her friend who went to the bank with her) and NO OTHER SHOOTING. So not only does that make the neighborhood drop down in the statistics from “high crime” to “low crime,” but the NO OTHER SHOOTING makes a significant difference in the way the story is understood by readers. And that is a distinction WITH a difference.
Malisha,
‘ If, for instance, a computer game was stolen from a house, it would be listed as ONE BURGLARY and ONE THEFT. If, however, a bicycle was stolen from a back porch, it would be listed as a THEFT but not a BURGLARY. ”
Because the latter isn’t a burglary. It’s really that simple. Burglary is breaking and entering, or just entering, with the intent to commit a crime but not always theft. Theft is always theft.
As far the resulting fear of that neighborhood, distinction without a difference.
Tony,
“The issue is how Conservatives and non-Conservatives approach life differently, not what they have in common.”
The problem of course is when we so magnify the differences that we forget the commonalities. Nick S. is just reminding us.
M. S. could surely as easily write a column today on how different liberals, or Democrats, are now from Roosevelt, Truman, JFK, or LBJ.
The Goldwater quote is spot on as to his fear of the far Religious Right hijacking the party. He was an Episcopal and granted land below his home to form “Christ Church of the Ascension” where my wife’s family rests (what a euphemism for ashes in an urn).
Something I should have added to an early comment is that even conservatives fall into splits of fiscally conservative/socially liberal and fiscally conservative/socially conservative, the latter not just the province of the Religious Right.
Nick S.,
While you may be OT this post, this is one of the best I’ve seen across many posts:
“Gentlemen, Conservatives and liberals want better lives for their kids. Both are generally good, and both are flawed. No one has all the answers but the righteous on both end of the spectrum seek the truth. “Respect those who seek the truth, doubt those who state they have found it.” The right and left have those who believe they have found it. I’ve been around too long to think anyone has.”
“Goldwater would be a Democrat today by Republican standards. Probably by Democratic standards as well.”
No. He’d be more a libertarian. Libertarians (small L) have factions that mirror the false dichotomy of “liberal-conservative” or “left-right”. Goldwater only skirted Buckley’s “Conservatism”. He doesn’t fall into easy categories, especially as he applied his principles over years.
@Nick: Conservatives and liberals want better lives for their kids.
Sure, but telling us what they have in common doesn’t tell us anything about their differences. If I ask you the difference between apples and oranges, telling me they are both about the same size, they are both fruit that grows on trees, and they both have skins and seeds, I haven’t learned anything about the difference between apples and oranges.
The topic of this post is what happened to Conservatives. The issue is how Conservatives and non-Conservatives approach life differently, not what they have in common.
Malisha,
Spot on.
I saw an example happen yesterday, and even heard it from the “criminal’s” own mouth. James McArthur, Iraq vet, highly educated, once arrested on a put up offense and hidden by the Baltimore police for forty days, was in a standoff with a SWAT squad outside his own owned house in Baltimore.
We got to hear him and the mediating police lieutenant discuss, for my part the last two hours. McArthur was broadcasting this live on the net, and at the same time was receiving tweets of abuse (mostly) and emails of praise.
THE ROLE OF THE MSM MEDIA
He could also note that it had come out on the local big MSM paper on-line., while he talked (5 hours) He was condemned with slanted spinned coverage, as expected.
His “crimes”—he has been accused and took a probation plea to get rid of it quickly, were in fact only one. His “court-issued warrant”—for not receiving and thus not appearing at a civil divorce hearing, was also cited as proof of his criminal ways.
America does not know when its citizens move and get a new address, even if you are so rich as to buy a house. And that includes all agencies including courts. We have one central register here and all report permanent moves.
It is a familiar tale which emphasizes the continuous battle which we fight—at least some of us.
TonyC.
One thousand percent agreement. And it is access through the net which has been deciding for me, but for others???. For me, it is all new since two years back. I didn’t really care about it all until then.
Polititics was crap, and that was enough to know. But looking for truth would have been difficult looking through the international paper newspapers at the library. So thanks for the net, yes.
So, mine came on its own, suddenly. So must assume you know more about it in general.. But I think my assessment of the media, which is less developed here than yours, is congruent with reality.
Reading now HS Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the ’72 campaign trail”, which examines the press as much as it does the politicians and the campaign mechanisms. Each reading is a step deeper into the morass.
And the book’s influence explains the jaundiced views I air.
ID707,
Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing…..” was a seminal book for me in understanding the political game. My original copy from back then is still with me though quite dog-eared.
Tony,
I fear Nick doesn’t want to comment on what the thread is about and I wonder why?
President Clinton painted a citizen as slutty white trash while he lied to a grand jury.
Tony C, Idealist, etc.: Guess what interesting thing happened in the press coverage of the killing of Trayvon Martin: The story started off with an inaccurate back-story.
The common back-story to this event was the Miami Herald-printed story (March 17 and March 18, 2012) saying that the RTL neighborhood in Florida was experiencing a high crime rate, consisting of “eight burglaries, nine thefts and one other shooting in the year before Trayvon Martin was killed.” After a FOIA to the Sanford Police Department, it turns out that the real figures are:
Seven burglaries, eight thefts and NO OTHER SHOOTING in the year before Trayvon Martin was killed.
The “seven burglaries and eight thefts” were the combined reports of 12 total incidents. If, for instance, a computer game was stolen from a house, it would be listed as ONE BURGLARY and ONE THEFT. If, however, a bicycle was stolen from a back porch, it would be listed as a THEFT but not a BURGLARY.
So really, the story should have started off, “A killing occurred in a low crime neighborhood” rather than “a killing occurred in a high crime neighborhood.”
Not every story receives the kind of attention this story has received, obviously; witness the threads Professor Turley has put up on the event. But if you think about how often the press reports, is given, creates, slants, or spins the information and misinformation with which we are bombarded, you can really come to the conclusion that the effect is overwhelming and the “reality and knowledge” factor is simply not available. Demoralizing.
Preferring not to know is sometimes a temporary option.
@Idealist: I think perhaps your disdain (and the general disdain) for mainstream press and media is actually a result of MORE information being available to you today than it was yesteryear.
There was a time before television when all of our political news was delivered by radio and newspapers, media titans, that decided what was suitable for our consumption, and censored themselves. Even with TV, Jack Kennedy’s extramarital affairs were deemed too salacious for our eyes and ears, and were swept under the rug.
We have disdain now mostly because we know when we are being lied to. We now understand the concept of “spin,” a word we never heard of in the 1950s, we now know politicians have lied their ass off in the past. We have heard the Nixon tapes and the ugly, criminal side of politics.
Our naive, adolescent trust in the “adults” of the world has been shattered, we know too much, and what we don’t know we suspect is being purposely covered up. We have learned that power seekers are seldom noble, but usually preening egomaniacs using power to collect sex, money and adulation.
We have learned the same thing about the press. We know too much, we have seen the leaked deals for “soft” coverage, kid glove handling of corrupt politicians to preserve their interview access and pump up profits, and outright lies promulgated by the press as favors to their political friends.
Your disdain for the press is a reflection of your greater sophistication as a consumer of news; and that is a direct result of being bombarded with a thousand news sources instead of six or seven. It is a result of the information age.
Gentlemen, Conservatives and liberals want better lives for their kids. Both are generally good, and both are flawed. No one has all the answers but the righteous on both end of the spectrum seek the truth. “Respect those who seek the truth, doubt those who state they have found it.” The right and left have those who believe they have found it. I’ve been around too long to think anyone has.
Someone says: New York Times—-Pentagon Papers, Wikileaks.
To which I reply: position and misinformation pre and post 2003 on WMD and Iraq, and what have you done for us lately fighting NDAA, Patriot Act extension. and boycott of a steered news delivery from the WH, etc.
So many causes neglected or simply avoided.
Press! Before it was toilet paper. Not even good for that now. 🙂
Gee. Wow. And all that.
I thought MikeS short comment on TonyC’s kernel was good. And although unsaid, I completed it with “why the phuck did you keep on going after that”?, which I would support.
Most of Tony’s comment was self-evident and gave a synthesis of why conservatives are as they are. In my words they are tribal-minded descendants like-minded with Abraham, ready to sacrafice anybody if the (current) God requires it. And expect in turn that others respect their rights to sacrifice others too.
The point that what I would have liked to see was that the technology thingy can be used by conservatives to their own advantage. And their propaganda consultants are very good at it, I mean conservatives are only tools of the corporations in ruling America.
As are liberals to a degree that they are fools and believe in media as a real service to the public.
Liberalism in America is peculiar in that it seems to be defined more by its enemies than by itself. In fact, one can wonder if there is a liberal self.
TonyC thinks that technology has helped us be better informed now.
Has it really? I doubt it, in spite of my dreams of internet’s development, which are partially rewarded.
We still must go to minor blogs or relatively large ones to find the truth about our society. We did not have those possibilities pre-internet. But what effect do these scattered sunrays have in the continual monsoon from the major corporate controlled media. Quote one and folks look askance at you.
What sensations have been revealed by our major organs?
And we still must go to the Guardian to find what major shifts are taking place in our government policy, such as the speech made there by the chief legal counsel of DoD that we will crank down military pursuit of Al Qaeda soon. Didja know that? Rice confirms it. Checking Google for US reports gave zilch.
Technology has only aided Big Brother in his tracking, surveillance and detection of non-conformist elements. Warm and cozy for you now?