Right Wing Progressives
Jonah Goldberg is discussing his book Liberal Fascism
I don't have any problem with liberals or conservatives criticizing stuff that goes on in the popular culture ... [I]t's when you want to dragoon the state into these things, everything from hate crimes to these early interventions in childhood. You read "It Takes a Village" and Hillary [Clinton] declares that basically we're in a crisis from the moment we're born and that justifies the helping professions from breaking into the nuclear family at the earliest possible age.Well I don't like it either. But the progressives and the social conservatives had a long history together. Public schools, alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition. A history of failure. You know maybe the state is no better at solving social problems than it is at solving economic problems. Ya think?
You have a lot of this stuff on the right, I agree. [George W.] Bush had his marriage counseling stuff that he wanted to propose, I didn't like that. I think Ashcroft gets a very bad rap, but one of the things I did not like was him basically having this philosophy that since the federal government was an agent for a left-wing agenda that therefore it should be an agent for a right-wing agenda. I agree with you to that extent, that that stuff is bad, and it constitutes a kind of right-wing progressivism that I really do not like....
Cross Posted at Classical Values
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8 comments:
You have overwhelmed my ability to respond.
David
True conservatism is kind of like zen: It is a non-ideology. It is a philosophy of less government, less spending, less intervention. "He who governs least governs best.", etc.
This makes it difficult to sell to a "more, more, more!" society.
On the other hand, conservatism promotes liberty. That's a concept that needs to be emphasized.
You have overwhelmed my ability to respond.
It comes from enduring long meetings with Trotskyites. Those with the most output and endurance win. :-)
The deal is: there is not much engineering to do until the results of WB-7 come out. So I am doing politics for entertainment while I await our new Marxist Overlords.
I find myself in a common position for me. Trying to make a single point and being answered with a hundred new issues while not yet having resolve a single one satisfactorily.
I have done the output and endurance thing before, but I don't consider it effective for actually changing people's minds.
(of course sometimes that's a given, and not the goal anyway.)
I ran across this today and It seemed so clearly written and pertinent to a point I've been pushing lately that I just had to repost it over here.
3. El Jefe Maximo:
In the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, it was Hezbollah that more completely pursued EBO, using the media to “find the keystone of the enemy’s strength and with a precision push, take the whole of the enemy’s force down.” They were able to obtain the “desired strategic outcome or ‘effect’ on the enemy. . .” and thanks to the free press, they did not suffer from lack of knowledge of the enemy or of the effects of their efforts.
The media is as much a weapon now as an air wing or an armored brigade. Unless and until democratic nation states and their armed forces can figure out away to apply media power, they’re going to come off second best, particularlly in struggles with non-state actors and authoritarian states, because they cannot protect their centers of gravity — the support of the home population and its politicians, from action by the enemy.
Nov 19, 2008 - 10:00 pm
Dave,
True. One might note that as a quasi European power Israel is at a big disadvantage WRT Europe.
Support for them in America is much stronger.
However, Israel these days seems to lack a pair. That is also hurting them.
I like bibi. I have always liked bibi from the very first time I saw him during the Iranian Hostage crisis in 1979. He was being interviewed by Ted Kopple (a man who's intelligence I always respected) and bibi slapped him around like a little child.
That was the only time I ever saw anyone get the better of Ted Kopple.
In any case, my point was more about the Media being a WEAPON, and it is almost totally in the hands of the Liberals. We need to take that weapon away from them. All of this SoCo/Libertarian discussion is inconsequential compared to the losses CAUSED by the Media.
Oh, one more thing. Israel's strongest supporters are the same Social Conservatives whom Most American Jews always vote against.
I guess they hate preachyness worse than actual enemies.
??????
David
So true, David.
Social Conservatives, especially the Evangelical type (the group to which I belong), hold a very special and sacred place in our hearts and minds for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
It just blows me away that the Jewish community here in the U.S. are in such lock step with liberal Democrats, who largely only give lip service to Jewish voters. Libbies actually give nothing more than a wink and a nod in their direction.
As for the media being a (powerful) weapon of the Left...ABSOLUTELY!
We all have reason to be concerned when a Dem-controlled Congress (and Executive branch) will once again attempt to pass FAIRNESS DOCTRINE legistlation in 2009, which they tried to do in 2007.
"Fairness Doctrine" legislation would literally kill ALL conservative opposition to the liberal message in public domain transmissions - open-air (not for fee) talk radio and television.
Speakers/writers like Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, etc. would all be adversely affected, and there aren't too many venues for conservative opposition to begin with, as it is.
This is another reason why libertarian types and social conservatives need to band together.
I mostly agree. But it's a mistake to lump hate-crime laws in with nanny-statism.
The purpose of hate-crime laws, and their effect if used properly, is to enable the punishment of terrorist crimes (defined as attacks on persons or property for the purpose of bullying third parties into doing what the criminal wants, lest they be next).
If (for example) an IRA bomb, or a house-burning performed by a KKK mob, were punished as mere property damage, with no enhancement for the bullying, it would be worthwhile from the bullies' point of view to do it again. And under legal systems that presume innocence, that's exactly what would happen without hate-crime laws.
Give us courts that are willing to let juries hear about the intent-to-bully and let those juries draw their own conclusions about that intent, and hate-crime laws would no longer be necessary. But until then, I'd fear for my life if we didn't have them.
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