by hilzoy
One of my favorite passages from C.S. Lewis is this one, which I've quoted before:
"The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." (Mere Christianity)"
I generally try to act on this: not to draw any bad conclusions about people until I have what seems to me clear evidence that those conclusions are warranted. Sometimes, people take this to mean that I try to be nice to my opponents, and they ask, "Why should we be nice to them?" But to me this isn't primarily about kindness at all, but about justice. When I think ill of someone who does not deserve it I am unjust to her. When I think something really bad about someone, I impugn her honor, which is worse. (Every so often I run into an article or a blog post that announces that "we no longer care about honor", and I growl: "speak for yourself!") It's important that not thinking ill of someone without good reason is primarily a matter of justice, not kindness. While a decent person will be kind in general, she does not have to be kind to everyone; and if she does not go out of her way to be kind to some specific person, that person has no right to complain. But we owe justice to everyone, without exception; and if I am unjust to anyone, I have wronged her.
Moreover, not all my reasons for refraining from thinking ill of people without good reason concern them. I value my self-respect, for example, and one of the things it depends on is my not maligning people without good reason. As regards serious charges, like treason: they matter too much to me for me to throw them around and debase them. But there's also one purely selfish motive: self-protection. Because hatred is a poison, and if you let it, it will destroy you.
By now, the pleasure of hatred is not one I'm particularly susceptible to, and I have never tried cocaine, so for me to compare the two might be a mistake. But I think the effects of hatred are like (what I've seen of) cocaine. At first, it's exhilarating. It's fun to see other people being vile and to set yourself in opposition to them. It's inspiring to go on a crusade. Of course, there is always a crusade at hand and an enemy to be fought, if your tastes run that way: the struggle to be a genuinely decent person, and the fight against your own worst self. But that requires that you actually give up your vices, which can be tiresome. A crusade against other people, like most of the pleasures of fantasy, has none of these drawbacks: it's all exhilaration, and none of that tedious business of recognizing your own faults and trying to correct them.
As with cocaine, if you stop at this point, not much has been lost. And some people do stop here. But if you don't keep hatred in check, you come to rely on it more and more, the fun fades, and it corrodes you from within. The more you nurse your hatred, the larger a part of your identity it becomes. But hatred is a poor substitute for a genuine self, and the more you come to depend on it, the hollower you become, and the harder it is to let it go. It eats away at your values: morality, which we ought to use to make ourselves better people and only secondarily to judge others, turns into a tool we use to excoriate those we hate, and to demonstrate, to ourselves and to others, how very, very different we are from them. Crusades are fought by the righteous, and if you need to believe that you are on a righteous crusade, you will of course need to conscript morality to the cause of maintaining your belief that you are on the side of the angels.
At this point, as Lewis said, your view of your opponents is driven by your hatred, rather than the other way around. You need "to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black", and your needs drive your beliefs. Your intellectual integrity is sacrificed to your psychological needs, your hatred loses any honesty it might once have had, and you surrender to fantasy. This can be hard to undo: once you give up your hold on reality, it's hard to find your way back. And if you can't, then you are surrounded by malevolent enemies of your own creation, enemies that can do you real damage even though they are purely imaginary. You are "fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred" which you created in your own image, and which has trapped you.
This is dangerous. I have watched people get into real moral trouble this way. I have no wish to join them. And the only way I know to prevent it is to be absolutely scrupulous about thinking ill of people. If the facts warrant my dislike, so be it. But the moment I find myself wanting to see grey as black, then I know that I'm going wrong. And as C.S. Lewis said, whenever this impulse "bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head." As I said, not just because it's unjust to think ill of others when they don't deserve it, or because it's ignoble, but because it's poison.
Some of you might be wondering what prompted all this. The answer is: some things I've seen recently that are hard for me to explain without thinking: the person who wrote this has gone past the point of just hating people, and into the realm of delusion.
Example 1 is an essay by Nelson Ascher:
"I was wrong to dismiss the pre-1989 leftists as dinosaurs condemned to extinction by evolution. While I was looking the other way, they were regrouping, inventing new slogans, creating new tactics and, above all, keeping the flames of their hatred burning. The history is still to be written about the moment when the left made its collective mind up and decided to strike an alliance with radical Islam. It had been tried before, in Iran/79, but, threatened by the USSR to the north and by its Iraqi client to the West, Khomeini didn’t have much time for the local leftists, nor did he need them. The idea of such an alliance was probably (re)-born in several different minds and in several different places, and it would be as difficult to say exactly where it took place first as it is to say which grain of corn is the first to pop when one’s making pop-corn. All that can be said is that, right now, we have a “fait accompli”.This newly ever-growing Western left, not only in Europe, but in Latin America and even in the US itself, has a clear goal: the destruction of the country and society that vanquished its dreams fifteen years ago. But it does not have, as in the old days of the Soviet Union, the hard power to accomplish this by itself. Thanks to this, all our leftist friends’ bets are now on radical Islam. What can they do to help it? Answer: tie down America’s superior strength with a million Liliputian ropes: legal ones, political ones, with propaganda and disinformation etc. Anything and everything will do."
Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber has already given this the response it deserves: ridicule. He also says: "it isn’t OK. Not to mince words, this is insanity." And he's right. Ascher apparently believes that the left (whoever that is) is bent on destroying the United States, and to that end has 'struck an alliance' with radical Islam. This is absurd on its face: leaving aside the implicit claims about the moral character of people like Edward, Katherine and I, what sense does it make to think that, say, feminists would align themselves with radical Islam? It is also an extremely serious charge, and no honorable person would make it without serious evidence. What evidence does Ascher present? At the beginning of the essay, he describes "an acquaintance (deceased since then), a hardliner Trotskyite" who was disappointed by the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's the only actual person he mentions in the essay. Hardline Trotskyites aren't typical of much of anything, and certainly not of the left. In any case, this particular hardline Trotskyite is apparently dead, so Ascher doesn't even have enough evidence to conclude that any living person holds the views he attributes to 'the Left'.
After describing his Trotskyite friend, Ascher goes on to say: "But there were probably, no, not probably, but surely, those who felt utterly defeated at the time. They just didn’t think it was advisable to go public with their anger and frustration." The 'probably, no, not probably but surely' makes it clear that he's guessing about the people he's describing. But in a few short paragraphs, he has stopped hedging, and started describing the supposed motivations and machinations of 'the left' in detail. At no point does he provide the slightest support for his extraordinary allegation that 'all our leftist friends' have actually formed an alliance with radical Islam to destroy America. The only anchor to reality is the dead Trotskite; the rest is something Nelson Ascher just made up.
This is fairly clear from the essay. But that didn't stop Instapundit from quoting it and adding: "Sigh. I wish he were wrong." (He has since explained that he meant only the European Left, although why it's supposed to be OK to slander (for example) large numbers of perfectly nice Swedish Social Democrats is not clear to me.) And it didn't stop Wretchard at the Belmont Club from citing it approvingly and adding his own psychoanalysis of Ascher's imaginary enemies:
"Although Ascher describes the hatred of the Left as the sole surviving ember in the ashes, he left out the one other emotion which has still survived: conceit. If the Western Left is convinced of anything it is it can bend the Islamic world to its will once America has been cleared away. Samuel Huntington wrote that Islam was "convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." But he might have been describing the Left, for whom recent history has been an unaccountable theft of their birthright; a little detail they will put right when America is vanquished. But there is the additional complication of Islam and the idea that they are the Wave of the Future is so ingrained the possibility that Islam will eventually dominate is unthinkable.But why not? Islam is 1000 years older than the Left; its population burgeoning while the Left is aborting itself into demographic extinction. More fundamentally, any honest Leftist must realize that his movement and its aspirations are rooted in the very West it seeks to destroy. Communist totalitarianism is the doppelganger of secular freedom; and the serpent in the garden must know that the desert, so hospitable to Islam, can only be a place of death for it. The Left may have embarked upon a journey of revenge. They will find suicide."
As I said, this is madness. But at least in this case one can imagine that maybe, just maybe, Ascher and Wretchard and Instapundit are thinking of some very tiny group of people, composed perhaps of Ward Churchill and the ghost of the hardline Trotskyite, whom they have unaccountably decided to refer to as "the left". Alternately, it may be that it's easier to say truly crazy things about a nameless, shapeless group than about an actual human being. But no such explanation is available in the case of my next example:
Example 2: Hindrocket's claim that "Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side." It's pretty clear who he's talking about. And it's pretty clear what he's saying about him: that Jimmy Carter is a traitor.
Now: Jimmy Carter is not on my list of favorite ever Presidents. But the idea that he is a traitor is insane. And Hindrocket made clear, in a followup post, that he really believes this: "We've been pretty tough on Jimmy Carter, but with hindsight, probably not tough enough." His main piece of evidence is from an article in Front Page: "In the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched businessman Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy. ... Hammer pleaded with the Russians for help. He asked if the Kremlin could expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls." To which Hindrocket adds: "Conspiring with our chief enemy to try to influence an American Presidential election: We could have called that treason, but we didn't. You can form your own opinion."
Note two things about Hindrocket's evidence. First, in an update to the post just cited he notes an email comment from a historian who claims his accusation is wrong, since "Hammer was not speaking for Carter when he made the request to the Soviets for increased Jewish emigration in advance of the election". Hindrocket says, among other things: "this is not an area in which I am an expert." To my mind, before you go around implying that someone is a traitor you should become an expert. If you aren't willing to go to the trouble, you should not make accusations of treason. Second, suppose that the historian is wrong, and Hammer was speaking on Carter's behalf. What Carter was trying do was: to get the Russians to release Jews, which (so the allegation goes) would provide him with a foreign policy victory. Now: it would clearly have been wrong for Carter (or any candidate) to make a deal that involved compromising American interests for political gain. But getting the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate does not compromise American interests. On the contrary, it seems to me to be a pretty straightforwardly good thing. And how trying to get them to do that, on whatever grounds, could possibly constitute treason is completely beyond me.
But this is not the strangest thing Hindrocket has ever said. That honor belongs to:
Example 3: A few days ago, via Digby, I found this video clip. It's an outtake from a documentary about blogs. It really has to be seen to be believed, especially so that you can see the calm and reasonable tone in which Hindrocket says things that are, again, just insane. For those of you with a slow connection, I've transcribed it:
"I mean, as far as I can tell, the left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about the Islamofascists, doesn't care about hundreds of thousands of people being murdered. All they care about is their own power. All they care about is regaining the presidency. All they care about is defeating President Bush. And, I think that the left, and by "the left" I'm including now almost the entire Democratic Party, you can count exceptions on your fingers, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, you can name the exceptions. The whole mainstream of the Democratic party, I would say, is engaged in an effort that really is a betrayal of America. What they care about is not winning the war on terror. What they care about is defeating President Bush. And I think that the positions that they're taking, the things that they're doing and saying, are significantly impeding the progress of the war, and give great encouragement to our enemies. And I indict them for that. I don't think they care about the danger to us as Americans nor do they care about the danger to people in other countries. They care about power."
OK. Let's take this slowly. Who is the left? "Almost the entire Democratic Party." That would be a large chunk of the adult population of this country, at a guess around fifty million people. And almost all of those roughly fifty million of us -- "you can count exceptions on your fingers" -- are so completely devoid of conscience or empathy that we don't "care about hundreds of thousands of people being murdered". And we don't care about terrorism; oddly enough, this includes even the largely Democratic populations of New York and Washington DC, despite the fact that their cities were hit, and their loved ones killed. But that doesn't matter to us: we are so blinded by our lust for power that we can contemplate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and remain unmoved.
Moreover, all roughly fifty million of us are "engaged in an effort that really is a betrayal of America". That's right: we don't just disagree with Republicans about policies. We aren't worried that the war in Iraq is distracting us from actual terrorists, or that it will help terrorist recruitment. We aren't alarmed by Bush's actual record on homeland security, horrified by his failure to deal seriously with the task of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, or appalled by Abu Ghraib. And we certainly don't oppose Bush because we believe that his other policies -- like, say, the deficits he has created -- are not good for the country. No: we're traitors. Sociopathic traitors to whom the murder of hundreds of thousands pales into insignificance beside our desperate quest for power. That's us. Edward, Katherine, me, and our partners in infamy.
Example 4: This is not an accusation; just a sign that something has gone badly wrong. Someone at a website called Minnestoa Politics wrote this email to Hindrocket:
"Your recent post on the JD Guckert/Jeff Gannon story has to be one of the saddest examples of conservative head-in-sand syndrome I have ever seen. You claim that there are three issues being brought up by liberals: 1) He isn't a "real" journalist, 2) He was a Bush administration plant, and 3) He had something (“God knows what) €“to do with the Valerie Plame story. Of course, you blatantly ignore the most important issue, the one that is easily found on hundreds of blogs covering the story: how did a person using a fake name get access to the White House? If I applied for a pass to the White House using the name "Max Power", I would not get in unless I had some friends high up at the top. A closely-related issue is exactly what the links are between GOPUSA and Talon News. Now, you may think it perfectly acceptable for the President and press secretary to consistently call on a reporter who is working for what is essentially an arm of the Republican Party. If so, it would be nice if you would admit it. That doesn't mean that others aren't allowed to have a problem with that arrangement, however.You also take Americablog to task for "finding nude photos of Gannon and posting them online." He didn't "find" photos taken by some paparazzi at a secret party; he found websites where Guckert (let's use his real name, not his pretend name) posted his own photos. If you posted photos of your family on your web page and I posted a link to these photos, would that make me a low-life "outing" you? Come on. Guckert is not ashamed of these photos, otherwise he would not have put them on the web in the first place. If somebody else finds them and points them out to the world, they are doing nothing wrong.
Just one, just once, it would be nice to see a conservative with the ability to find fault with other conservatives. I won't hold my breath, though."
In my opinion, this email is a bit on the snarky side, but not abusive or over the line. Hindrocket wrote him this reply*:
"You dumb shit, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid shit."
Hindrocket has acknowledged that he wrote the email, and that it was "a mistake". But there's no law that says you have to reply to every email you get. Having emailed Hindrocket to let him know when I have written about him in the past, I can attest that he does not reply to every email that anyone sends him. That being the case, if Hindrocket found himself angry enough to consider writing this kind of response, wouldn't both the decent and the sane thing to do be to get up from the computer, go out for a nice long run or something to get it out of his system, and either reply when he was in a better mood or just delete the email? Would you ever write something like this "by mistake"? Would you ever write it at all?
My conclusions about this: First, if Ascher, Hindrocket, and Wretchard don't believe the things they wrote, then I think it goes without saying that they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, decent and honorable people, since decent and honorable people don't accuse others of treason when they don't believe those accusations are true. But if they do believe what they wrote, then in my view they have allowed their judgment to be completely corrupted by hatred. Because the things they wrote are delusional.
Second, they are also irresponsible. Neither life nor politics is a game. The objective is not to score points against your opponents by any means necessary. When you have a public platform, you should use it responsibly. You should try to write things that you think will enlighten or at least (harmlessly) amuse, not things that inflame hatred for its own sake. This is just a matter of basic decency, and no basically decent person would consistently ignore this responsibility, especially if she suspected that her readers might include people who are already poisoned by hatred, like, say, this LGF reader commenting on Ascher's piece:
"shouldn't these assholes be hung/imprisoned as traitors? damn man, when are we gonna wake up and label a spade a spade. the more this goes on the more young minds will be poisoned in high school and college. but isn't this what the left wants? most are gay/lesbian/transgendered or so abortion happy they have no children. the only way they can ensure their survival is by brainwashing us and our children."
Third, I read PowerLine and its ilk to see what they are up to. But I do not take them seriously as sources of information. I believe that anyone who does take seriously people who use their public platforms irresponsibly, and whose judgment has been corrupted by hatred, is running serious moral risks. As I said earlier, hatred is a poison that corrodes your soul. It is dangerous to invite it in and make it feel at home. And it harms our country, which is surely not suffering from a shortage of hatred, or an overabundance of people who believe that most of their political opponents are decent people who disagree with them on matters of policy.
Fourth, all my examples are from right-wing bloggers. I'm sure there are hateful left-wing bloggers out there. But I think the right has a special problem with this sort of stuff. If you look at the TTLB Ecosystem traffic rankings, three of the top ten blogs are conservative, and all three (Instapundit, PowerLine, and LGF) traffic in accusations of treason. Three of the top ten blogs are liberal (Kos, Atrios, and Kevin Drum), and none of them, as far as I've seen, accuses their opponents of treason, or flings around very serious charges without very serious evidence. If we move to the 'respectable' blogs, on the right we have Andrew Sullivan, who has just continued a long tradition of hateful charges and comparisons by comparing the Harvard faculty to Stalinists, and on the left we have Josh Marshall, who does no such thing. Likewise, on the radio the right has Rush Limbaugh and his many imitators, while the left has -- well, nobody anywhere near that level of popularity. If I were on the right myself, I would be trying to think of something to do about this situation: some way to try to replace vitriol and paranoia with reason. Being on the left, and thus (in their eyes) a traitor to my country, for some reason I don't think I'd be listened to.
I'm sorry about the length of this post. But I think this is quite serious, and quite alarming. PowerLine gets over 70,000 visits a day. LGF gets just under 95,000. It scares me that there are so many people out there who take these people seriously. It also scares me that people get inured to this: that it's common enough to hear people accusing the likes of Edward, Katherine and me of treason that it doesn't register any more. But now I'll just sign off.
* Question for other ObWiFolk: do the posting rules cover quotes in which obscenity is essential to one's reasons for quoting? If so, I'm sorry; just let me know and it won't happen again.
Great post, yadda yadda, Hindrocket thinks evolution is transparently false, blah blah blah, Aristophanes on Cleon, doodle doodle doo - what does it all matter?
Posted by: rilkefan | February 24, 2005 at 11:50 PM
The right side of the blogosphere comes in two flavors: hard, and harder.
Is it too late to put the blogging genie back in the bottle?
Posted by: 2shoes | February 24, 2005 at 11:53 PM
I just love how the left is held to the Marquis of Queensbury rules while the right is busy working liberals over with brass knuckles and bags of oranges (no marks).
Posted by: Hal | February 25, 2005 at 12:00 AM
"...what does it all matter?"
Two of Neiwert's "mobilizing passions" in Part Two of "The Rise of Psuedo-Fascism":
"-- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;"
"-- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;"
Later, in Part Three, Neiwert quotes Umberto Eco"
"The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason."
hmmmmm....
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 25, 2005 at 12:05 AM
Anyway, what's wrong with a little hatred?
Posted by: rilkefan | February 25, 2005 at 12:07 AM
Hmm... I've been to the comments section of Kos and Atrios, and I think that the level of hatred there compares to anything you might find on LGF.
All of which is to say that we really, really need to finish with Iraq. This whole level of "The Other Guy is the very essence of Evil" discourse has really, really got to stop. The only way it's going to stop is if we don't have one group of people shouting that the war is the first step for a coming fascist dictatorship with the other side shouting that The Liberals are working with the enemy.
Maybe if we had a parliamentary system, the coalition making would take some of the venom out of the process.
Posted by: Andrew Reeves | February 25, 2005 at 12:16 AM
That was a knee-slapper, rilkefan.
But Jerry Falwell represents only a very very tiny portion of the Republican Party or people who voted for Bush. Just as Ascher, Hindrocket, Wretchard, Reynolds, Coulter, Savage are marginal figures relegated to the fringes, disowned and disavowed by every conservative I know. Really.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 25, 2005 at 12:22 AM
Good post. It's been posited that the reason for the rising bile on the right is that rifts are opening over immigration, social security, etc., and there is a need to unify the party via its hatred of fellow Americans. Sounds plausible to me. I was just scratching my head lately (when not screaming silently at my monitor) trying to figure out why these people are so friggin' mad all the time if George Bush is so awesome and everyone loves teh freedom.
Speaking of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, did you ever hear the story about how Richard Perle consigned tens of thousands of Soviet Jews to more years behind the Iron Curtain? Kissinger had a deal quietly worked out with the Soviets, and Perle as a staffer for Scoop Jackson gave a splashy press conference, after which the Soviets got huffy and nixed the deal. Oh, and then there are the cornholed dissidents in Afghanistan ... but I digress.
Posted by: praktike | February 25, 2005 at 12:28 AM
There is no point in singling out the ringleaders. Were there not a huge constituency for their rantings, you would not know their names. The bigger question is why, now, do so many otherwise seemingly normal people possess such a fervent desire to be led down the path of hatred and demonization?
You won't have an answer today. We don't yet really have a complete answer for last century's train wrecks. It might be time to figure out a plan B, though. These things have a habit of ending badly for those who stick around to see the ending.
Posted by: felixrayman | February 25, 2005 at 01:02 AM
Following up on Pratike's comment.
Walter_Sobchak at the Poorman caught a comment at the Libertarian blog ("his" characterization) QandO that suggested that the big-tent Republican party is keeping tenuously together by demonizing The Left.
URL:
http://thepoorman.net/gl/users.php?mode=profile&uid=33
Walter's comment, basically, is that the wider the rift between the libertarians and the Christian-Fundamentalists, the nastier the public attacks on The Left will probably become.
I'm not quite sure where to see the silver lining--but make room for me on that higher ground! I'm trying to scramble up!
Posted by: Jackmormon | February 25, 2005 at 01:38 AM
I dunno, Jackmormon; I thought you were already up there ;)
Posted by: hilzoy | February 25, 2005 at 01:54 AM
On our way to becoming C.S. Lewis central! Good post.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | February 25, 2005 at 02:06 AM
Sebastian: the reason I didn't comment on your earlier CS Lewis post was that I couldn't figure out where to start. He basically converted me to Christianity when I was 13 (I had heard that Chuck Colson, the most sordid of Nixon's people, who had once said that he would run over his own grandmother if it would help Nixon, had read Mere Christianity and converted; and I, not then having realized that people could become convinced of things for reasons other than good arguments, thought: gee, any book that could convert him must be amazing. And so it began. I owe him a lot.)
Posted by: hilzoy | February 25, 2005 at 02:12 AM
Just as Ascher, Hindrocket, Wretchard, Reynolds, Coulter, Savage are marginal figures relegated to the fringes, disowned and disavowed by every conservative I know. Really.
bob, you're being sarcastic, right? These people are high-profile commentators who get lots of exposure. Didn't Powerline get Time magazine's Blog of the Year award? Isn't Reynolds a go-to guy for pundits who want quotes by or about bloggers? Isn't Coulter a (gag) 'best selling author,' talk show darling, and popular lecturer?
Posted by: CaseyL | February 25, 2005 at 02:17 AM
Good post. It's been posited that the reason for the rising bile on the right is that rifts are opening over immigration, social security, etc., and there is a need to unify the party via its hatred of fellow Americans.
The Chinese government has been employing a roughly similar tactic over the past few years, although it's currently manifesting as nascent hypernationalism. [Wait until the Beijing Olympics to see it in its full glory.] It's not directly analogous in that I don't know of the CCP trying to get various subgroups within China to hate other such groups -- at least, not since 1989 -- but this externalized antipathy does appear to be a desperate attempt at cohesion since the loss of their moral authority at Tiananmen.
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 02:19 AM
You have to realize that Bob operates at multiple levels. He's a complex guy, trying to make sense of a world gone mad.
Posted by: praktike | February 25, 2005 at 02:20 AM
"Hmm... I've been to the comments section of Kos and Atrios, and I think that the level of hatred there compares to anything you might find on LGF."
Maybe, Andrew, but random commenters on those sites don't have the audience that people like Limbaugh and Coulter have, or that Reynolds and Hindrocket have for that matter. A few nutcases aren't scary. Nutcases with huge followings are.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | February 25, 2005 at 02:25 AM
CaseyL, word to the wise - bob Interpretation is a burgeoning field of study among hermeneuticians. E.g., I came across this just the other day in _The Journal of the Gulf of Engulfment_: "Quand nous lisons bob, nous ne le lisons pas - le texte nous lit, literalement, avec litotes."
Posted by: rilkefan | February 25, 2005 at 02:26 AM
Ceci n'est pas un texte, rilkefan.
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 02:39 AM
I will only add, I do not find Reynolds' claim that he was only talking about the European left at all credible, given:
1) that he only made this claim after his post was criticized.
He does this all the time--making a blanket accusation about the Democrats or the Left or Bush's opponents. If no one calls him on it, he does not retract or qualify his statement in any way. If and only if a prominent, reasonable lefty blog takes offense, he then says, "of course I wasn't talking about you, (Ted Barlow or Henry Farrell or Kevin Drum or whoever has called him on it this time)," and ask why they're oversensitive/misrepresenting him.
Reynolds does this sort of thing so often, and has been doing it so long, that liberal blogs coined two words for it back in October of 2002: glennuendo (the initial insinuation) and disinglenuousness (the denial of responsibility for what he just said or linked to).
2) The sentence in Ascher's post that reads,
"This newly ever-growing Western left, not only in Europe, but in Latin America and even in the US itself, has a clear goal: the deistruction of the country and society that vanquished its dreams fifteen years ago."
Reynolds did not quote this but he presumably read it, and he makes no effort at all to say that he does not believe this is a fair description of the American left.
3) this section of Ascher's post which Reynolds does quote:
"the (in many cases state-sponsored) mushrooming of NGOs, Kyoto, the creation of the ICC, the salami tactics applied against America’s main strategic ally in the Middle-East, Israel, through the Trojan Horse of the Oslo agreements, the subversion of the sanctions against Iraq etc."
I and many, many American liberals have supported human rights organizations (I presume those are the NGO's he's talking about), Kyoto, the ICC, and the Oslo accords. (Classy to implicitly compare Yitzhak Rabin with the Matyas Rakosi by the way). If by "subvert" the sanctions against Iraq he means "criticize"--I personally didn't know enough to take a real position on this, but many American liberals had expressed concern about the humanitarian effects of the Iraq sanctions. Every single one of these things applies to many American liberals nearly as well as to European liberals.
4) This recent Reynolds post, which I'm not linking to but you're free to google:
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 02:51 AM
On our way to becoming C.S. Lewis central! Good post.
I agree, Sebastian - would you care to clarify your comment, February 23, 2005 05:26 PM, in the third Eason Jordan thread, on this basis?
Posted by: Jesurgislac | February 25, 2005 at 03:26 AM
Considering that my comment was directed specifically to you Jesurgislac, as opposed to 'leftists' and considering that it was based on my understanding of your position on the Afghanistan invasion--that it should not have occurred, no.
If my premise--that you opposed the Afghanistan invasion, is incorrect, you may correct me on that and I will revise. Otherwise, no.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | February 25, 2005 at 03:36 AM
"Third, I read PowerLine and its ilk to see what they are up to."
Thanks, sincerely. That's yeowoman's work. I couldn't possibly.
I suspect as you do that the 3 Minute Hates have and will increase proportionally to how unswimmingly things go for the Republican Party. If Social Security privatization fails, there will be a noticable ratcheting up of eliminationist rhetoric. Because it is difficult for them, for anyone, to comprehend that a majority of your countrymen disagree with you in good faith, so their minds must be twisted by the evil ideological opponents.
Based on my understanding of history, a movement such as that can go one of two ways. Either it has a critical mass of population such that it can pull moderate people into the bile and unfortunate things will happen, or it will not and moderate people will be driven out. Given the education, communication, and most importantly the general prosperity in this country I think the critical mass for that would be quite large, so I'm pretty sure they're just marginilizing themselves.
Posted by: sidereal | February 25, 2005 at 05:20 AM
I was in the US Air Force at the end of the 80s. One of the shops I worked at in Germany (Ramstein) played Air America all the time. So I listened to Rush Limbaugh at least a couple of hours a day. I disagreed with what he was saying a lot, but he sounded fairly reasonable at the time.
When I got out of the Air Force I went back to College. A friend there was a big Rush fan and told me about the TV show. So I set up my VCR to tape it. (it was on in the middle of the night.) After watching perhaps 5 shows I realized what was bothering me. Rush Limbaugh's show was all about getting people angry. Really he was just mobilizing peoples rage and hate.
He's is really brilliant at what he does. Now he has many disciples.
Thats really about the best I can do to explain why. I'm sure there is some deeper reason, having to do with backlash and the diminishing of the middle classes, but I think Rush has accomplished a lot in terms of getting the people to align behind the Republican program.
Posted by: Frank | February 25, 2005 at 05:21 AM
Sebastian: Considering that my comment was directed specifically to you Jesurgislac, as opposed to 'leftists' and considering that it was based on my understanding of your position on the Afghanistan invasion--that it should not have occurred, no.
Considering that it was a response to a comment where I tried to outline what we agreed on, and a complete diversion from the topic of the thread, I just wondered.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | February 25, 2005 at 05:56 AM
All of which is to say that we really, really need to finish with Iraq. This whole level of "The Other Guy is the very essence of Evil" discourse has really, really got to stop. The only way it's going to stop is if we don't have one group of people shouting that the war is the first step for a coming fascist dictatorship with the other side shouting that The Liberals are working with the enemy.
It's not going to stop, it has worked for the republicans and has therefor become Standard Operating Procedure.
Have you seen the new ads "America Next" has created against the AARP?
Posted by: Don Quijote | February 25, 2005 at 07:17 AM
That's nice for you, but I don't think it's generally true. Sure, most conservatives disown and disavow these loonies at the moments of their greatest insanity...and then quote them again a day later. I've seen that pattern a thousand times on the forum where I used to moderate. After a while it becomes quite clear that the disavowal is insincere, just a "plausible deniability" kind of thing. Many conservatives online actually seem to agree with practically everything the pundits put out, but they're just too lily-livered to admit it when the flames get turned up. They absent themselves for a moment, then return when the storm has subsided without any sign of actually having registered the knock to their idols' credibility.
Posted by: Platypus | February 25, 2005 at 07:35 AM
Three of the top ten blogs are liberal (Kos, Atrios, and Kevin Drum), and none of them, as far as I've seen, accuses their opponents of treason, or flings around very serious charges without very serious evidence.
I don't know about treason, but the hate runs strong and thick in those places, and it is indeed poisonous. Drum doesn't strike me as a hater, but a hefty chunk of his commenters are. Quite frankly, I don't how some of them are able to hold on to that emotion over a sustained period of time.
do the posting rules cover quotes in which obscenity is essential to one's reasons for quoting?
I don't think there should be any exceptions to the rule of "no profanity". Josh chided me at Tacitus for doing the same thing, and he's right.
Posted by: Charles Bird | February 25, 2005 at 09:17 AM
I agree with the thrust of Hilzoy's post. I'm also a big C.S. Lewis fan--he helped (re)convert me to Christianity. I'm thrilled to see him getting so much attention around here. He wasn't just a great apologist, but also a great political moralist. Most of his comments on political issues come in little side comments, but they've stuck in my mind, particularly the one Hilzoy quotes here. I think it's fair to say that Lewis was more of a political conservative than a liberal, but he was an honorable conservative, not to be confused with most of the leading conservatives you find in America today. Lewis was the Christian Orwell.
Okay, all that said (I wish I could write better, because Lewis deserves more eloquent praise than what I just gave), I don't think it's quite right to quote Lewis on this hatred issue and confine the applications all to rightwingers. As a lefty I agree that this part of the spectrum deserves most of the criticism, but as I was re-reading the Lewis quote I started applying it to the person he had in mind--the person reading it. I think that for me and for many lefties, there is some degree of evil pleasure in thinking the worst about Bush and his supporters. Much of the time I think those thoughts are fully justified, but nonetheless, the poison exists in me and I know in many others. It just hasn't gone nearly as far in us.
And of course, the right is in political control, so Hilzoy's emphasis is mostly correct. But I think that in fairness we lefties (or those of us who are guilty) need to pluck a few beams out of our own eyes. Lewis , I think, would want that from anyone citing his words.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | February 25, 2005 at 09:23 AM
Sadly, hate and anger have frequently been at the core of what motivates people politically. The anger part is mostly OK as long as we check ourselves with some reason -- Hilzoy is right that its the hatred part that causes all of the trouble. Its anger blinded by a lack of reason.
These posts are the perfect example -- there is plenty of anger here at times about issues, but very little hate-mongering. The posting rules are a crude form of drawing the line, so we all know the difference.
Righties who think lefties are just as full of bile as the Limbaugh/Coulter school of political thought are blinding themselves to this distinction.
Forget the posters at Eschaton or Washington Monthly --its a false comparison to offset leading right-wing commentators with posters at lefty sites. Lets talk about the words used by Atrios or Drum. Anger and barbed humor at times, but nothing like the hatred that pours from their equivalents on the right. (Or the constant lying that infects most of the points made by Limbaugh/Coulter when the facts unfortunately do not fit into their hatefest mold.)
Both left and right use anger in their speech, which leads to the false notion that each is equally guilty of hate-mongering. But if you cannot see the distinction between the two, then you are part of the problem.
Hate is working great politically for the right, so I expect it to continue for the simple reason the success reinforces even the worst behavior.
Posted by: dmbeaster | February 25, 2005 at 10:38 AM
CS Lewis never managed to convert me to Christianity, but I do occassionally try to enter other worlds through my wardrobe, and talk at the odd goat now and again.
Posted by: praktike | February 25, 2005 at 11:54 AM
Warning! Threadjack about to ensue!
I don't think there should be any exceptions to the rule of "no profanity".
I've always felt, from my position of absolute power(lessness), that the rule should always be "no directed profanity", i.e. profanity aimed at an individual or group of people. Merely using it as a general exhortation, interjection or part of a now-standard phrase (e.g. "I don't give a sh**") has never struck me as the kind of behavior that the rule ostensibly protects against.
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 12:10 PM
1. I think it is both unfair and incorrect:
"I've been to the comments section of Kos and Atrios, and I think that the level of hatred there compares to anything you might find on LGF."
These comments are from one thread on the Abu Ali case:
These are from a second thread on the same topic:
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 12:16 PM
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Dm,
Since the conversation is about blogs, I think comparing left- and right-wing blogs works. And in such a context, the comments of Kos and Atrios, especially in their rather hate-filled language regarding Christians and conservatives ("brownshirts" and "Christers") are almost as bad as an LGF commentator calling for violence against Muslims. Both attempt to dehumanize the enemy and strip them of any good. When you start equating your opponents with Nazis, at that point you have basically said that your opponent has no redeeming quality and is an evil-doer with whom there can be no compromise.
Katherine, I think that you are exactly right about Neiwert.
Posted by: Andrew Reeves | February 25, 2005 at 12:35 PM
So, Andrew, is calling someone a brownshirt really the moral equivalent of acting like one? That's how I read your comparison. Calling someone a name is in no way equivalent to calling for violence against them in my book or, I think, that of any civilized observer.
Posted by: Platypus | February 25, 2005 at 12:59 PM
Platypus,
The problem is, when you say that your opponents are Nazis, there is an implicit statement that, being Nazis, they have to be resisted by any means necessary. After all, if you really, genuinely believe that the country is being run by Nazis, then it rather naturally follows that the Nazis Must Be Stopped. If, for example, I called you a terrorist, there would also be implicit a call for you to be stopped by whatever means were necessary even if I didn't out and out say, "My enemy is a terrorist and must therefore be arrested, tried, and shot."
When you say that your opponents are pure evil with whom there can be no compromise, you are most definitely sewing the seeds for violent action (cf. the guy who got beat down by the protestors in NYC and the occasional attacks on GOP HQ's during the election).
Posted by: Andrew Reeves | February 25, 2005 at 01:08 PM
And in such a context, the comments of Kos and Atrios, especially in their rather hate-filled language regarding Christians and conservatives ("brownshirts" and "Christers")
Please don't conflate evangelical fundamentalists with Christians. As a general rule of thumb -- though there are of course exceptions -- the term "Christer" refers to the former, not the latter.
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 01:13 PM
Thank you, Andrew; that was an enlightening response. I think there are still salient differences between the two scenarios, though. When you call someone a brownshirt, it doesn't necessarily mean that you consider them equivalent to implementors of the Final Solution. It could be a comparison to early brownshirts, before Kristallnacht, who were certainly an unpleasant group but not necessarily one that must be stopped by any means. The supposed call to violence is implicit and indirect, if it exists at all. The conclusion you jump to can also be avoided, but not so with the cited comments from LGF. Those are very explicit calls for violence, and violence not just in reaction to someone's actions but in response to their statements or merely the color of their skins.
I think the parallel you're trying to make is a stretch, and quite a long one at that. I stand by my claim that the two sets of statements are not as directly comparable as you make them out to be.
Posted by: Platypus | February 25, 2005 at 01:23 PM
Thanks for reminding me why I don't read LGF, K.
I read nothing on the left that compares to that degree of mindless hatred. The effort they put into being vile could solve world hunger if redirected. Surely their souls are worm-infested globs of burnt jackal innards.
Posted by: Edward | February 25, 2005 at 01:32 PM
As far as wartime restrictions on the rights of minorities, Bush has nothing on FDR
This is not meant as a snark on Bush, but Bush has nothing on FDR because the possiblity that existed for FDR doesn't exist for Bush. Japanese-Americans primarily lived in 'ghettos' (the old meaning of the term as a ethnic enclave), intermarriage had not occured at levels that would undermine public support of such policies because immigration had a specific starting point that was late enough to separate JAs out, and an absence of true facts about the level of the threat. Note that in Hawaii, where there was even more reason to intern Japanese Americans, careful debunking of rumors (such as the idea that Japanese immigrant snipers were active during the Pearl Harbor attack link) in a large part prevented mass hysteria. This is not to suggest that Bush would lock up all Muslim-Americans, but structurally, he can't. American society is too intertwined to be able to do this to any ethnic or religious minority. Bush shouldn't get credit for not doing it (which is _seriously_ lowering the bar), just as I shouldn't get credit for refraining from purchasing the world's supply of smallpox and witholding it to increase the price.
To defend Neiwert, the last portion of his series addresses how the US situation relates. In fact, he specifically labels is 'pseudo-fascism' in that it mirrors fascism, but strictly speaking, is not fascist. Also, I disagree when Katherine says
Neiwert needs to focus less on parallels with the history of Germany and Italy and more on the history of the United States.
Industrial countries dealing with modernity provide the best parallel. Trying to derive parallels with various incidents in US history, without regard to the zeitgeist of the times obscures more than it illuminates. One could argue that because Europe has only had to deal with fascism for 2 or 3 decades of a 1000 or 2000 year history, it is a mere blip. Yet fascism is a problem of the relationship of the state to its citizens, and the state only was able to assume the kind of power necessary for fascism in this past century.
I also think that there is a stream in historical analysis that suggests that the pre WWII US had some of the features of fascism, when it is defined the control by a centralized authority that nonetheless protects private property, though googling turns up all these Lyndon Larouche type sites. (an interesting question: how would all of you define fascism? The Google define feature gives a number of interesting and contradictory definitions)
I'd also echo Ed's comments of thanks for wading in so we don't have to.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 25, 2005 at 01:54 PM
Charles Bird: I don't know about treason, but the hate runs strong and thick in those [Kos, Atrios, and Kevin Drum] places, and it is indeed poisonous. Drum doesn't strike me as a hater, but a hefty chunk of his commenters are.
I can speak with some authority to the comments on Political Animal, as I have spent quite a bit of time there. I have nothing to say about the commenters at Kos or Atrios.
I would say there are some haters on PA, but more on the right than the left. Accusations of "treason" come mostly from the right, "brownshirt" from the left.
Of course, any number of the commenters may be caricatures merely posing (this is the 'net, after all), but having read many comments over nearly a year I judge that some of the advocates of, for example, "nuke the Arabs," are sincere, though usually that's exaggerated rhetoric not meant literally (at least, not at the moment).
The topic of civil discourse has arisen many times in the comments on PA. My answer always is, I am for it but sometimes I despair of achieving it. My advice is, ignore the chaff.
It is a pleasure to participate here instead.
Posted by: ral | February 25, 2005 at 02:19 PM
This reminds me of something I noticed a few days ago. Power Line had a couple of Gannon-related posts that were particularly hostile to "the left" (1, 2), and they were getting a lot more references from other blogs than their other posts. Most of the references were from blogs that agreed with them, and a minority registered disagreement.
I think if someone were to look, there'd be a similar phenomenon on the left, but it might take a different form than links to entries. On dKos, "popular" entries might get lots of comments, for instance, rather than links.
Posted by: Kyle Hasselbacher | February 25, 2005 at 02:27 PM
I've always felt, from my position of absolute power(lessness), that the rule should always be "no directed profanity", i.e. profanity aimed at an individual or group of people. Merely using it as a general exhortation, interjection or part of a now-standard phrase (e.g. "I don't give a sh**") has never struck me as the kind of behavior that the rule ostensibly protects against.
Personally, I think the rule against profanity is silly; it attempts to deal with an underlying problem by treating only the symptom, and it's entirely too easy to get around the letter of the rule while still violating the spirit.
Besides, the main reason profanity was outlawed here originally was because Moe wanted to be able to read the site from work. That would seem to be not an issue anymore.
Posted by: Josh | February 25, 2005 at 02:29 PM
I would say there are some haters on PA, but more on the right than the left. Accusations of "treason" come mostly from the right, "brownshirt" from the left.
The main problem with the Calpundit/PA comments is that there are a number of excitable people there who are far too easy to troll. Coupled with the troika of permatrolls there, this means that otherwise interesting threads tend to derail very, very quickly. I wish that Kevin had the time and inclination to moderate his comments as I think that would solve the bulk of the problem but, alas, 'tis not to be.
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 02:30 PM
BTW, having re-read the original post for a third time, I have to say that I'm experiencing a strange new variation on "outrage fatigue": "excellence fatigue". There's only so much of it I can take. Therefore, hilzoy it is incumbent upon you to write a bunch of crappy posts, thus refreshing our palates and allowing us to enjoy your work anew.
Go write crap! Go write crap noooooooooooooooooooooooooow!
Posted by: Anarch | February 25, 2005 at 02:33 PM
"Besides, the main reason profanity was outlawed here originally was because Moe wanted to be able to read the site from work. That would seem to be not an issue anymore."
I comment with the idea that somewhere, somehow, Moe's still reading this blog. Helps keep me civil, mostly.
Posted by: rilkefan | February 25, 2005 at 02:33 PM
Andrew, you're right that the comment sections of Kos and Atrios can be cesspools of anger and self-righteousness, but you're drawing an inappropriate (and convenient) equivalence. The comparison hilzoy made was between the bloggers, not the commentors. The barrier to entry for a commentor is 0. You just have to have access to a computer and at least 1 finger or equivalent. It's too easy to find ugly people saying ugly things in comments, and I always tune out when people do that trying to prove how bad the other side is (sorry, Katherine).
The barrier to entry for a blogger is much higher. . enough people have to like what you say to make you relevant. The barrier to entry for the top 10 of the blogosphere is stratospheric. You have to be able to speak coherently for a large movement of people.
And in the comparison between bloggers, there is no comparison. Kos is worst on the left, but he's just resentful and angry, not hateful. He doesn't make sweeping eliminationist comments about the 'right'. Atrios is snarky and righteous, but not hateful. Glenn reposts hate like it's always breaking news. Charles and the Powerline posters are very disturbing, very hateful people. The most reasonable wilfully righty place I know of is RedState, and a front-page post there yesterday used the term 'blackshirts'. There is no equivalence. The American right as it stands now has a serious problem with burgeoning hate.
Posted by: sidereal | February 25, 2005 at 02:36 PM
"He focuses far too much on Italy and Germany and far too little on the history of other countries"
Absolutely,and I prefer Stirling Newberry's analysis, which is based on the Fourth Republic in France after WWII. :}
Rove's Republic
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 25, 2005 at 02:39 PM
Despite what I wrote about Neiwert above, I do know where he's coming from. I don't really worry that we're going to turn into Mussolini's Italy let alone Hitler's Germany, but as Jim Henley has noted in another context, "we can be much better than those countries and yet a disgrace to ourselves."
I listed a bunch of Bush administration policies where other administrations, including some I really admire, have done worse. But there are three things about the current situation I find especially worrisome:
1) I don't know of any administration that has taken as lax an attitude toward torture as this one. I can very easily believe that the U.S. was responsible for more acts of torture in previous wars than it has been in the war on terror. But I know of no previous examples where the White House condoned or tried to legally justify it.
2) I don't know if any administration has made claims of executive power quite as sweeping as this one. They have claimed the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants without any hearing or trial. They have claimed that enemy combatants are completely unprotected by both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions; the only law whose application they seem to acknowledge are the Convention Against Torture, whcih they have tried to narrow out of existence, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which they can get around through the use of contractors and C.I.A. agents. They have also claimed that if the UCMJ and the Torture Convention and any other law conflict with what the President deems military necessarily in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, then they are unconstitutional and he can disobey them at will. This unlimited Commander-in-Chief power seems to apply in every single country in the world, including the United States, for the entire duration of a war that will have no clear-cut end.
There may be a legal precedent for all this, but I don't know of it.
(Worth noting: they have not actually openly defied a court order the way that, e.g., Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln did. But they don't quite comply either, and if it's anyone but the Supreme Court they just appeal it upward and then the Supreme Court punts it downward and it starts all over again. Also, none of this helps you if you are held incommunicado and in secret, and your family doesn't know where you are or doesn't have access to the U.S. courts.)
3) They have done all this with comparatively little provocation.
September 11 was one of the worst days of my life. But it does not in any way denigrate the evil of the murderers or the innocence of the victims or the horror of the day to note that our country has been in much greater danger.
The British burned the White House in 1812. There were times during the Civil War when it looked like Maryland might secede, cutting off the union states from their capital; when the North really looked like it was losing. 620,000 people died, at a time when our country had a much smaller population. More people died in one day at Antietam than on 9/11, and tens of thousands more were wounded. There was a comparable number of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor, and four times as many at Okinawa, and over three hundred thousand killed in the course of World War II. If the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had held, we would have lost World War II. During the Cold War, over 30,000 Americans died in Korea and over 50,000 died in Vietnam--and at several moments, most notably during the Cuban missile crisis, we came closer to a nuclear war than it's really possible to comprehend.
Now, I remember telling myself this at the time--that this country had survived greater dangers--and it wasn't much comfort at all. I was born in Manhattan and most of my family and closest friends still live in New York. I still remember what one of my old teachers told me: "the whole city has witnessed a mass murder." I worked in a refugee & trauma psychiatry program at the time, so work was not much of a distraction; I didn't know how to deal with those things coming to my more-or-less hometown. I went to work, I studied for and took the LSATs--but it often felt like the world had cracked and we were all trying to hold it together with duct tape. I was not only worried that there would be more attacks; I was certain of it. If you told me that we would go for three and a half years and counting without one, I would never have believed you.
Normally I have as good a temper as anyone but in a real crisis, I have a harder time controlling fear than anger. I know that it's at least as common to react with anger, to want revenge, to kill ten of them for every one of us they killed. Many of my friends reacted that way. But over time their anger abated, just as my fear did. We didn't forget, I don't think we ever will, but we were able to think more rationally about how the U.S. should react. And yes, that is necessary. It's not an easy thing to do, fighting terrorism--it's hard to separate the murderers from the innocent civilians they hide behind; hard to preserve both our own lives and our country's basic decency. Kill too few terrorists or give in to their demands and the terrorists grow stronger. Kill too many civilians, needlessly brutalize too many people, destabilize too many governments and the terrorists grow stronger. You can't sail between Scylla and Charybdis if you're ruled by fear or anger.
But since 9/11, during a period of relative calm* that I never expected we'd have, during a period when they control all of the elected branches of the government and their political power grows and grows, a lot of people on the right only seem to get angrier and angrier, against more and more people. First they are angry at Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East, then at those living in the U.S., then all immigrants, then most Europeans, then most Democrats and liberals. They are willing to support or tolerate or pretend not to see greater and greater restrictions on freedom: first the PATRIOT act, then Guantanamo, then military tribunals for U.S. citizens, then serious discussion of mass deportations or internment. First they defend torture if there is a nuclear bomb ticking down in Manhattan, then if there's a roadside bombs ticking in Ramadi, then the torture of any guilty terrorist for intelligence, then the torture of innocents.
I don't believe we're going to go forever without another attack on U.S. soil. There is a pretty good chance that we will not go four years. If they only get angrier and angrier during a time of relative safety in the U.S., how will they react when it ends? How would they react to a serious chemical or radiological or biological attack? How would they react to something like Beslan on U.S. soil, where children are purposefully targeted? How would they react to a nuclear attack? Those things are unlikely, in some cases very unlikely. But they are also not impossible or even implausible.
If this is how they talk and act now, what will they do then? It would certainly get worse. I don't know how much worse; it might still not be as bad as some of darker chapters in our country's past. But even if that is true--I had hoped and thought those were chapters we had closed forever. I am not willing to see them re-opened. This is especially true because this war, unlike the Civil War, World War I, World War II or Vietnam, is not going to have a clear-cut end. It will certainly last longer than three of those wars and probably will go on longer than all four.
*only relative. I don't wish to minimize the deaths of soldiers in Iraq, the brutality at the Fallujah bridge or in the beheading of Nick Berg or Margaret Hassan or too many others, the horror of the Bali and Madrid bombings or the Beslan massacre. But we react differently to these atrocities when they are committed against American citizens rather than citizens of other countries, when they are committed on U.S. soil rather than abroad, and when they are committed against civilians rather than soldiers.
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 03:26 PM
Hm, "excellence fatigue." I feel it too. Thank you Katherine, I have nothing else to add.
Posted by: ral | February 25, 2005 at 03:32 PM
"Worth noting: they have not actually openly defied a court order the way that, e.g., Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln did."
Also worth noting, a Congressman's press release last week about asking the President not to comply with a court order.
http://www.house.gov/hostettler/News/Hostettler-news-2005-02-17-gibson-ten-commandments.htm
P.S. Sorry, maybe someday I'll learn how to do links.
Posted by: Doh | February 25, 2005 at 03:38 PM
(I always tune out when people do that trying to prove how bad the other side is (sorry, Katherine)).
Just to clarify, I don't think the LGF commenters are typical of the right. But I also don't think they're comparable to any left-of-center site--I think that's a false equivalence here:
"The problem is, when you say that your opponents are Nazis, there is an implicit statement that, being Nazis, they have to be resisted by any means necessary."
Do you think that when Andrew Sullivan refers to "academic Stalinists baying for Summers' blood", he is making an implicit statement that Summers would be justified in violently resisting or suppressing any attempt to fire him?
I really don't think so. In both cases, it's hysterical, stupid, and destructive, but no reasonable person could interpret it as advocating violence.
It's stupid and wrong to call people "brownshirts", but something that arguably implies that violence is justified is not the same thing as a direct call for violence, imprisonment, torture, deportation or execution. To characterize abortion as murder and abortionists as murderers arguably implies that they should be killed--but it's one thing to maybe-imply that and quite another to state it directly. To characterize Ted Kennedy or Jimmy Carter or Kevin Sites or the whole Democratic party as traitors arguably implies that they/we should be imprisoned or executed--but it's one thing to maybe-imply that and quite another to state it directly. To say that non-believers will go to hell and believers go to heaven arguably implies that it's justified to physically threaten or harm them to get them to convert--but it's one thing to maybe-imply that and quite another to state it directly.
LGF states it directly.
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 03:54 PM
"I also don't think they're comparable to any left-of-center site"
sorry, I should have said: "the commenters on Atrios or Kos or any left-of-center site that I've read." I don't read DU or Counterpunch and obviously there are plenty of left-of-center weblogs I've never even heard of.
Posted by: Katherine | February 25, 2005 at 03:59 PM
Hi -- I just reread my original post, and one thing needs correcting. I said "If we move to the 'respectable' blogs, on the right we have Andrew Sullivan, who has just continued a long tradition of hateful charges and comparisons by comparing the Harvard faculty to Stalinists, and on the left we have Josh Marshall, who does no such thing." When I said this I was thinking of the blogs on the right. On the right, it does seem to me that the three most popular blogs are not, as one might say, the cream of the crop, or the ones you'd think of if you were trying to come up with candidates for "really thoughtful conservative blog above a certain (high) level of popularity". I don't think this is true on the left, and did not mean to imply that, say, Kevin Drum doesn't count among the 'respectable' bloggers.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 25, 2005 at 07:12 PM
I do agree that pure hatred is counterproductinve in political discussion. In particular I would agree that Asher goes too far.
Alas, much of the left has made an alliance with radical Islam and other anti-American groups. See for instance this article by Norman Geras, a well-respected progressive, who critizes this tendency.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/wi05/geras.htm
Posted by: Les B | February 25, 2005 at 07:53 PM
"a well-respected progressive"
Umm, well-respected by the right?
Also note that "much of" isn't even supported by the silly post you reference.
Posted by: rilkefan | February 25, 2005 at 08:03 PM
I understand that Kevin Drum and Atrios are among the big names on the left of center blogosphere, but both are actually just a little left of center politically. If you want to compare how high levels of anger manifest themselves on left and right, you need to look at the further left types, people like me whose first thought on seeing an American President (any American President, in my lifetime anyway) is
"war criminal" or "war crimes enabler". We Chomskyites see US foreign policy as one long series of crimes. (Okay, honestly, I don't think it's all criminal. But in every Presidential term you can usually find some truly monstrous policy or policies being implemented.)
I actually like Jimmy Carter, for instance, but I think he should be summoned before some high tribunal and asked just what the heck he thought he was doing when his Administration continued the Ford/Kissinger policy of arming Indonesia while they were slaughtering Timorese. Carter isn't a traitor, but he's someone who gave weapons to a country engaged in genocide. (If Darfur qualifies, then so did East Timor in the late 70's.)
So compare bloggers on the far left with my views to the folks on the far right who see Democrats as traitors. Are we haters? Ward Churchill came close in his original 9/11 remarks, and his later remarks (clarifying that only some of the victims had it coming) are still disgusting. But most of Churchill's defenders on the far left that I've read distance themselves from the ugly things he said about the victims, while agreeing with his point about American foreign policy. I say "most of", because there have been a few exceptions.
As for the rightwing talk, I don't know what to make of it. I tend to think it's mostly a bunch of blowhards (just as I'd say about Churchill). Of course, it only takes a few Timothy McVeighs among the loudmouths to kill a bunch of people, so that's reason enough to be concerned.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | February 25, 2005 at 09:00 PM
I read the Geras article, but all I found was someone citing the responses "the left" has to things, without providing evidence, unless you count his citation of someone else doing the same thing. I also note that much of what he says is explicitly about "the socialist left", which is a pretty tiny fraction. And I would really have to wonder, in any case, about anyone who was a Marxist in 2001, unless that person had a really distinctive reading of Marx. I would expect most people in the US who self-identify as Marxists these days to be, as Geras says, intellectual fossils, but I'd also expect them to be very few in number. Whereas Hindrocket is talking about almost all of the Democratic party.
And Anarch: thanks.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 25, 2005 at 09:22 PM
I've always felt, from my position of absolute power(lessness), that the rule should always be "no directed profanity", i.e. profanity aimed at an individual or group of people. Merely using it as a general exhortation, interjection or part of a now-standard phrase (e.g. "I don't give a sh**") has never struck me as the kind of behavior that the rule ostensibly protects against.
I agree with this 100%--and would have written it if Anarch hadn't. We should distinguish between expletives used as a weapon, and those used simply for rhetorical effect or in context.
Posted by: Catsy | February 25, 2005 at 09:36 PM
Quite frankly, I don't how some of them are able to hold on to that emotion over a sustained period of time.
It's real easy, anytime you feel the level of hatred coming down, all you need to do is read LGF, Free Republic, tacitus or Red State. Walking in those sewers will get your blood boiling & will topoff your hatred level.
Posted by: Don Quijote | February 26, 2005 at 11:25 AM
I was raised in an extremely secular home. My atheist ex-Catholic dad was a physics professor an my atheist ex-Catholic mom was a political activist. The religion I was raised on was science. So I see things that way.
I think the elements of fascism lie in the human heart. it is part of our heredity, our anncestry as pack-hunting territorial omnivors. People are liberal and generous and tolerant according to proximaty and their own comfort level. We are good to our nearest and dearest, we give when it doesn't threaten us to give, we care about others when our own needs are met. When frighhtened or threatened we get mean. We have a tendency to fear and hate The Other. This is how people are, unless carrefully taught to be otherwise.
Our culture's tendency to slip toward fascism is both an instinct inherent in all humans and related to our view of ourselves as the City on the Hill.
The political right and the conservative blogs are more prone to fascist traits than the left because they appeal to fear and nationist self-aggrandizement (the City on the Hill syndrome), which are the roots of fascism and the modern person's way of expressing caveman territoriality. their basic message is "We are the best people! Our tribe can do whatever it wants! yeah for our team! We have to feel like winners!" Of course they are going to hate anyone inside their tribe that expresses any reasonable doubts or has any questions. Of course they will seek to expell anyone who doesn't join in the cheerleading.
The liberal blogs are more about ideas, more about retaining membership in this society, and more about dealing constructively with problems. Fearmongering
isn't a big part of the message and the liberal take on the City on the Hill isn't that we ARE the best, it's that we should try to BE the best. So we are constructively critical of our tribe. That's why liberal blogs and liberals in general don't go as far down the slipery slope towards fascism as the conservatives do.
Posted by: lily | February 26, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Goto www.cartercenter.org and try to find some indication that President Carter gives any support to expanding democracy in Ukraine, Iraq, Lebanon or REAL elections in Iran.
He may not be against those things, but he certainly not an enthusiastic supporter.
The real problem is that he is a busybody who pushes his own agenda 25 years after he left office.
Recycling some older comments from CT:
I have seen it pointed out, that it has been a general principle that ex-presidents do not criticize the foreign policy of the sitting president, especially when in other countries. Criticism certainly does not mean the ex-president is playing for the other side, but negotiating with other countries’ leaders in a way that is at odds with US govt policy can reasonably be construed as such.
Here is some discussion on the MCLAUGHLIN GROUP about President Carter’s criticism of US foreign policy in his Nobel Peace Prize Speech:
***
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: (From videotape.) For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Jimmy Carter took aim at the heart of Bush’s national security strategy, the preemptive strike, this week in Oslo, where he was belatedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel nearly a quarter of a century ago. The former president described President Bush’s new strategic preemptive strike doctrine, quoting approvingly the words of Ralph Bunche, the revered U.S. government official and U.N. diplomat, the first Black to be a division head in the Department of State and a Nobel Peace Prize winner himself.
FORMER PRESIDENT CARTER: (From videotape.) “To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of war mongering. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war,” unquote. We must remember that today there are at least eight nuclear nations on earth, and three of these are threatening to their own neighbors in areas of great international tension.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You have thoughts on this?
MR. ZUCKERMAN: Yes, I do. I mean, I must say to you I find his sermonizing on foreign policy to be slightly repellant to me. This is man who sent letters to every country in the Security Council in 1990 opposing the United States going to war against Saddam Hussein, back in 1990, 1991. He actually sent those letters, and sent a copy of the letter, he maintains, to the White House. That, to my mind, is not the role of an ex-president of the United States. Now, he is being a good ex-president, and a much better ex-president than he was a president. But his attitudes towards the defense of this country and the defense of our interests, in my judgment, is wrong-headed. It was —
***
Because President Carter lobbied Security Council members against US policy, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft accused Carter of violating the Logan Act, the law that prohibits American citizens from conducting unofficial foreign policy.
***
President Carter did not only interfere with President George H W Bush foreign policy. He interfered with President Clinton’s North Korea policy by personally visiting with Kim Il Sung and praising North Korea. Carter wrote speeches for Yassir Arafat during the time Clinton was negotiating between Israel and the PA. Carter visited Castro in Cuba during the current Bush administration, and attempted unofficial diplomacy there without consulting the White House.
***
To this day the Carter Center website has no comments about the Iraq elections.
***
In 1980, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) of President Carter: “Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has essentially adopted our enemies’ view of the world.”
Posted by: DaveC | February 26, 2005 at 02:00 PM
DaveC: "The real problem is that he is a busybody who pushes his own agenda 25 years after he left office."
(a) Gosh, I push my own agenda, and I have never held office at all. Is this wrong?
(b) My criticism of Hindrocket wasn't: you don't like Carter, I do. There are things I don't like about Carter. My criticism of Hindrocket was: whether or not Carter is a busybody, he is not a traitor; and no one should make such a serious charge without very good evidence.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 26, 2005 at 02:07 PM
President Carter has done wonderful things in Africa and Habitat for Humanity, but in those cases he wasn't throwing monkeywrenches into offical US diplomacy.
By the way, I think we've had 4 above average and better presidents in a row: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush.
We've gotten a little spoiled and don't remember having 4 below average presidents: Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter - all of whom did some very good things in office.
Posted by: DaveC | February 26, 2005 at 02:15 PM
DaveC:
There are certainly things one could criticize about the Carter Center, but the fact that they don't pronounce upon every single election around the world is not one of them. The Carter Center is, after all, a private, nongovernmental organization, with finite resources. It is not the State Department, with embassies flung across the globe. So, like every other nongovernmental organization, they tend to pick their battles (and they usually only go into electoral situations where they are invited, to some degree), so it's in those situations that we will find them making statements.
Posted by: DavidH | February 26, 2005 at 05:01 PM
Well come on folks, what do you expect from political ideologies that despise pluralism and other liberal ideals?
Many on the left, by their very nature, can't commit to total demonization because they are part of the pluralism we endorse.
The left, on the other hand, is not part of the society they ideolize.
Posted by: NeoDude | February 26, 2005 at 11:53 PM
Well come on folks, what do you expect from political ideologies that despise pluralism and other liberal ideals?
Many on the left, by their very nature, can't commit to total demonization of the right, because the right is part of the pluralism we endorse.
The left, on the other hand, is not part of the society the right ideolizes.
Posted by: NeoDude | February 26, 2005 at 11:59 PM
DaveC: By the way, I think we've had 4 above average and better presidents in a row: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush.
You could probably make an argument for the first three, but the fourth? In what universe is George W. Bush an "above average and better" President?
Posted by: Jesurgislac | February 27, 2005 at 02:35 AM
Many on the left, by their very nature, can't commit to total demonization of the right, because the right is part of the pluralism we endorse.
The left, on the other hand, is not part of the society the right ideolizes.
Hit it on the head, Neodude. Hit it on the head.
Posted by: Anarch | February 27, 2005 at 03:43 AM
DaveC, I guessing you think Reagan is great because he hacked back at all those government regs that were choking American initiative and faced down the Soviet threat. Yet both of those points, especially the first, Carter was the one who got the ball rolling. I'd be interested to know precisely what points you feel that Carter fell down on.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 27, 2005 at 04:19 AM
LJ,
I believe that the right's problem with Carter stems from the fact that he did not go to war over the Iranian Hostage Taking. The fact that such a war would have probably caused the death of most of the hostages is irrelevant in their view, he just did not act tough!
Posted by: Don Quijote | February 27, 2005 at 07:16 AM
How many more Americans were killed during Carter's term?
How many more Americans were killed during Reagan's term?
How many more Americans were killed during Clinton's term?
How many more Americans were killed during Bush's term?
This would seem to show us who is better at kkeping Americans and other human beings...safe.
Posted by: NeoDude | February 27, 2005 at 11:08 AM
I'd be interested to know precisely what points you feel that Carter fell down on.
East Timor, Cambodia (Pol Pot), and Iran are a few cases where the cause of freedom and civil society took some hard hits.
When Israel and Egypt made peace, that was a great sign of hope. But the assassiantion of Sadat, and Khomeini murdering his mainly secular political rivals marked the beginning of "this new kind of war" that no president sufficiently addressed until George W Bush. And that was only because he was forced to take action because of 9-11.
His response was not just to seek out people to punish, but to address the "root cause" by seeking to bring freedom and democracy to the region.
The neo-isolationism of the liberals is an astonishing role reversal, with the insistance of maintaining a status quo with brutal regimes in the name of stability.
But there are many liberals, Michael Totten, Roger L Simon, Gerard VanderLeun, Norm Geras, Marc Danziger, etc., etc. who understand the importance of this new struggle. And when the left kicks them out of the tent and is bleeding voters by accusing Glenn Reynolds, etc of supporting fascism, that is self defeating. And well yes, hatred IS a poison.
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 11:54 AM
The neo-isolationism of the liberals is an astonishing role reversal, with the insistance of maintaining a status quo with brutal regimes in the name of stability.
Many of us do not trust the new faith of the party of isolationism and anti-pluralism. I still believe this a is a rich-man's war, a land grab...done in the name of Christ...er, I mean democracy...or what ever new reason they got to steal stuff!
And we have good reason:
"Nope, no Bin Ladden over there," said Mr. Bush, as another picture showed the leader of the free world looking under a couch. "Maybe under here," he continued to more laughter.
From:
"How to Appease Bin Ladden and Keep His Backers Happy? (Washington Time)
"How Do You Lose the Man Who Killed 3000 Americans on American Soil?" (National Review)
"What Excuse Can You Use to Kill 500,000 Iraqis?" (Weekly Standard)
"How to Avoid Saudi Arabian and Pakistani Rage For Capturing the Man Who Killed Thousands of Americans?" (Commentary)
"How Can Bush and Patriotic Right-Wing Americans Assist Terrorist Who Desire To Kill More Americans? (Talon)
"How Can Bush and Patriotic Right-Wing Americans Assist the Spread of Iranian Influence In the Region? (NewsMax)
Posted by: NeoDude | February 27, 2005 at 05:42 PM
Look, it's pointless to get into a pissing contest to see who can find the nastiest quotes from the [right/left]. Spend some time reading blogs, and you'll see plenty of nastiness on both sides.
Back to the C.S. Lewis quote at the beginning, which isn't being discussed here very much:
Why are right-wingers the only examples of THIS attitude (which doesn't, by the way, have anything necessarily to do with hateful rhetoric)?? Look, if in 5 years it turns out that Iraq is a model democracy, that the rest of the Middle East is falling into line with Iraq, and that Bush's bold plan to remake the Middle East was the best thing that ever happened to that region, are we to suppose that all the anti-war bloggers would say, "Gee, aren't we glad that our dire predictions of woe turned out to be wrong! What a wonderful visionary Bush turned out to be. Three cheers for Bush!" Come on. You know and we all know that wouldn't happen. Some lefties would remain in denial, seizing on every piece of bad news as an excuse to whine that things aren't yet perfect in the Middle East. Others would claim to have been on the right side all along (a la what happened with various people who conveniently forget how strenuously they opposed Reagan during the Cold War).The attitude that Lewis spoke of, in other words, is not tied to the right-wing whatsoever. It's an attitude that all humans are prone to feel.
Posted by: Functional | February 27, 2005 at 06:18 PM
Functional: you're right, it's not. Nor is hatred, which settles in different places at different times. (The Weathermen were not models of tolerance and fellow-feeling.)
That said, in the interests of accuracy, the idea that liberals are isolationists is nuts, as is the list of the "liberals" who get it. In the last election, we had Clark, Graham, Lieberman, and Kerry, and I omit Dean just because I don't know enough about his foreign policy views, outside Iraq, to know one way or the other. And Edwards' foreign policy views aren't fully formed enough for me to have a clear sense. But the non-isolationists included out candidate, plus Clark, who was one of the three others who had a shot (with Edwards and Dean.) The isolationist wing was represented by Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun, who were, needless to say, trounced.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 27, 2005 at 06:31 PM
East Timor...
The East Timorese annexation and genocide began under Ford, FYI; it's true that Carter could have possibly done something, but then so could Ford, Reagan and Bush, so I don't really see Carter taking the rap for this. [I seem to recall reading that the preparations began during Nixon's presidency but I can't locate that source atm.] The conventional wisdom, such as it is, was that Kissinger was responsible for selling them down the river in return for sweetheart mineral and oil deals with Suharto; at least, that's part of why the East Timorese want to see Kissinger on trial for war crimes.
...Cambodia (Pol Pot)...
Again, both Nixon and Reagan bear some responsibility for this too. As the old saying goes, "The secret bombing of Cambodia wasn't a secret to the Cambodians."
...Iran
Any news on the supposedly new research confirming Reagan's participation in the October Surprise? I haven't seen hide nor hair of it since last year -- which is funny, since one would expect either exultant declamations or virulent denunciations given the circumstances.
Posted by: Anarch | February 27, 2005 at 07:14 PM
Look, if in 5 years it turns out that Iraq is a model democracy, that the rest of the Middle East is falling into line with Iraq, and that Bush's bold plan to remake the Middle East was the best thing that ever happened to that region, are we to suppose that all the anti-war bloggers would say, "Gee, aren't we glad that our dire predictions of woe turned out to be wrong! What a wonderful visionary Bush turned out to be. Three cheers for Bush!" Come on.
So this is the argument now...please if you can only imagine that it will be a success, it will become one?Our problem is we are not dreamy enough?
"Can you just imagine that I will eventualy become a millionaire and lend me the money today?"
Posted by: NeoDude | February 27, 2005 at 07:21 PM
Thanks Anarch. I'd also note that the whole Iran thing got started because Carter permitted the Shah to enter the country for treatment, in large part because a stink was made about treating an old friend of the US so poorly. (I don't want to label these people conservatives, because they don't neatly map onto the current liberal/conservative divide)
One has to assume that the hatred of Carter is based not on a true analysis of his policies and ideas, but because the desire to demonize.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 27, 2005 at 07:51 PM
lj:
One has to assume that the hatred of Carter is based not on a true analysis of his policies and ideas, but because the desire to demonize.
I don't neatly map onto the current liberal/conservative divide:
I voted for Carter 1976 & 1980 and Mondale in 1984!
although I wasn't as interested in politics as in reading "Mother Earth News> and Creative Computing>
@$#! Cant get the darn links right!!
There are others too, like Michele Catalano (I think hilzoy oughta blogroll her, but she's a little naughty) and Brian Tiemann that dont fit into neat categories
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 08:18 PM
www.motherearthnews.com/
www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/
I shore don't write links so good.
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 08:20 PM
Michele is at asmallvictory.net
Sample:
5. Name two things you can’t live without.
If I could make a wish
I think I’d pass
Can’t think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound
Nothing to eat, no books to read
Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
Uh...where was I? Oh, yea. My Hello Kitty vibrator and rechargeable batteries.
===
Brian is at grotto11.com/blog
===
I am at, like, nowhere.
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 08:35 PM
DaveC
I don't want this to come off snarky here, but when asked for problems with Carter, you give a laundry list that is refuted, or at least answered. I've seen this evil Carter meme emerging over the past 3-4 years or so, but the voice given to it by Hindrocket and Heyward (via Regnery, a real seal of approval for wingnuttery) should give anyone pause and at least try to weigh the evidence. From that standpoint, links to the frontpage of Motherearthnews and and atariarchives don't really cut it.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 27, 2005 at 08:45 PM
Ok, President Carter's biggest screwup was what should have been his strong point: Energy Policy and the "Moral Equivalent of War" (MEOW).
He claimed to be a Nuclear Engineer, but did not do anything positive for nuclear energy:
"After 1974, many planned units were canceled, and since 1977, no orders have been placed for new nuclear units, and none are currently planned. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident greatly increased concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants in the United States. The regulatory reaction to those concerns contributed to the decline in the number of planned nuclear units, with Watts Bar I (1996) the last plant completed."
Now I would agree that the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor was fraught with peril (I know that I dont want plutonium anywhere near my river), but now well what ARE we doing with plutonium now anyway? And why are there smokestacks for energy production using coal instead of safe, well thought out, well regulated, sources of nuclear energy? And all that money spent on coal gasification programs yielded us - zilch, nada, nothin'.
President Carter fumbled the very issue that, had he handled it well, could have been his claim to fame.
And the DOE, at least at Oak Ridge, wasted a lot of time and money on "Mother Earth News" types of approaches to energy policy. Can you imagine a city where everybody uses a wood burning stove for heat?
There were serious, serious problems at Oak Ridge when Carter was president. He made an energy crisis where there was none, and messed up research and development for cleaner energy sources.
I know all this from personal sources, I didn't work at Oak Ridge at the time but knew a lot of people who did.
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 09:36 PM
As for the Mother Earth News, Creative Computing, etc. stuff, I was just trying to lighten things up a little.
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 09:41 PM
The isolationist wing was represented by Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun, who were, needless to say, trounced.
The Democrat's equivalents of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanon, so far out there that they didn't have a chance.
Yet they were nominally in the race to the very end, while Lieberman, who I think would have won the election if he had been nominated, exits early. I think there might be a problem with the primary system on both sides
Posted by: DaveC | February 27, 2005 at 09:56 PM
DaveC
No worries, and sorry if I sounded like I was angry. I appreciate the lightening of the mood.
As for Carter and nuclear power, that is certainly not one of the issues that people like Hindrocket are bringing up when they call Carter a traitor.
Also, I believe that Carter's time (with 3 Mile Island and the movie the China Syndrome coming at the end of Carter's presidency) was the unravelling of the consensus that nuclear power was workable. I also feel that Carter's push for deregulation (which is often credited to Reagan, who merely presided over what Carter had started) did not fit comfortably with nuclear power and Carter, as a former nuclear engineer, was more aware than most at the time exactly what that meant. Given the problems we have had in Japan with nuclear accidents, it is clear that a deregulated business environment is not an appropriate place for nuclear power. I don't know what the consensus view is in the US, so I'd welcome your insights.
As for the other attempts at energy independence (and I should note that I voted for Anderson *cha(grin)*) were undercut quite severely as doom mongering, whereas now, they look rather prescient.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 27, 2005 at 11:18 PM
LJ -- you did? Me too! I not only travelled from college in NJ to New Hampshire several times for him, I actually registered as a Republican (and stayed that way, through neglect, for several years, leading to my having to vote for my sister for President in the 84 GOP primary, but I digress...)
Posted by: hilzoy | February 27, 2005 at 11:53 PM
JFTR, I grew up next door to Oak Ridge. They had a nice science museum where there were annual paper airplane contests in which I competed once or twice. And the streets were all winding and confusingly named - my dad had a friend who lived in a neighborhood where every street name began with "A". This was intended to flummox Russian spies, or so I was told.
Wondering about the world in which hilzoy's sister became president in '84...
p.s. I originally wrote "windy" above, but I couldn't find the word (with a long "i" derived from "to wind") in the dictionary...
Posted by: rilkefan | February 28, 2005 at 12:44 AM
hilzoy, have you read this post from the estimable Philosoraptor?
Posted by: rilkefan | February 28, 2005 at 01:01 AM
lj
You are a pleasure to discuss things with. (And hilzoy and edward_). I expect people to strongly disagree with me. And I like to have some distractions as well. Thanks again to Obwi for making a place I can do this. See you next weekend.
Posted by: DaveC | February 28, 2005 at 01:13 AM
DaveC, glad to hear you find this a welcoming place.
Re linking, try
<a href="mylink.html">my blue underlined text</a>.
Watch out (e.g., via preview) for the quotes.
Posted by: rilkefan | February 28, 2005 at 01:21 AM
hilzoy
Yes, tis true, which is why I both have a bit of sympathy and a lot of anger at Nader voters. Yes I know how you feel, but boy I'm angry because I was that stupid too. I remember vehement arguments about the 50 cents a gallon gasoline tax. Those were the days
Rilkefan
How about snakey ?(also spelled snaky apparently)
DaveC
Thanks, and if I get too out of hand, please call me on it.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 28, 2005 at 01:25 AM
lj, unf. "snakey road" brings to mind "road covered with snakes". Also, it's only "snaky". But "serpentine" would do, if it wasn't too long and the name of a mineral (something like lizardite, ha ha) and also I think the name of some sort of early artillery piece (except a quick google doesn't agree - ok, now I find "serpentine powder" and a kind of trigger).
Posted by: rilkefan | February 28, 2005 at 01:33 AM
How about "twisty," as in "maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
"Serpentine, Sheldon, Serpentine!" (The In-Laws)
Posted by: ral | February 28, 2005 at 01:39 AM
Puts me too much in the mind of "TheGarden of Forking Paths".
Posted by: rilkefan | February 28, 2005 at 01:45 AM
Philosoraptor's brilliant as always. Ta, rilkefan.
Posted by: Anarch | February 28, 2005 at 03:29 AM
rilkefan: well, now I have read it ;) -- Actually, I think it's true only of parts of philosophy, but mercifully not of all. There are people in philosophy who work that way, and you more or less have to be able to deal with them if need be (e.g., by defending your view, if it's defensible, against vehement attack), but there are also a lot of people who would agree with philosoraptor about the story being sad.
Posted by: hilzoy | February 28, 2005 at 09:02 AM
I'm late to the conversation. But I did want to say to hilzoy, thanks so much for the original post. Very good stuff, and very true.
The key issue, to my mind, is not to say (or to deny) that "the right has more haters than the left." I happen to think that the statement is true, but that doesn't matter as much. What matters is that we all take the advice to heart, and no matter how ugly the divide becomes, we don't, *ourselves*, start thinking of those on the other side (or anybody at all, for that matter) as traitors, subhuman scum, etc., etc.
Thanks again, hilzoy.
Posted by: Kent | February 28, 2005 at 04:11 PM