Right Wing Nut House

Is Pat Buchanan a racist? Is Rush Limbaugh?

Am I? Are you?

I discovered after writing my Rush Limbaugh post that there is no set definition for identifying a racist - at least one not fraught with politics, and informed by partisan rancor. “It’s obvious” is not an argument either way. Nor is there much agreement on whether one can be a racist subconsciously. This “all white people are racists and don’t even know it” idea was very popular a couple of decades back. But I don’t think anyone save committed racialists think that way anymore.

But does that mean that there is not a nurtured outlook of white superiority in our society that makes some of us oblivious to our own bigotry?

In the end, it all comes down to perception, and whether one has a decidedly deterministic worldview. How one experiences race in America has an awful lot to do with how low or how high we set the bar that defines for us whether one is a race hater or not.

Attorney General Eric Holder remarked early in Obama’s term that America was “a nation of cowards” because we wouldn’t talk candidly about race. I think he is right we don’t talk candidly about race but he is wrong when he says the reason is cowardice. How can there be a discussion on race when there is no agreement on what actually constitutes racism? Oh, there are “speech codes” and “hate crime legislation” that deal with the most obvious, outward manifestations of racism that help define, in the broadest possible terms, racists.

In fact, I would argue that speech codes and hate crime definitions further muddy the waters with regard to defining racism. In my estimation, such remedies lower the bar on what defines a racist, mixing legitimate free speech issues with racial issues. If one defines racism according to racial sensitivity, simply stepping on someone’s toes verbally can be construed as “hate.” That defeats the purpose of the First Amendment, and I believe is the reason many conservatives reject the idea of speech codes altogether.

(Hate crime legislation is an entirely different matter and goes to “intent” - a tricky legal definition that I wish would be used judiciously but the potential for abuse, and inconsistent application is too great to justify its passage.)

So are all racially insensitive people racists? Does the use of stereotypes automatically make one a racist? If you reject the NAACP position on affirmative action, are you a racist?

Most mindless partisans eschew the questions and simply go for the jugular. But for those interested in exploring these questions, we have an excellent exhibit in the form of an Op-Ed by paleoconservative Pat Buchanan that, on the surface, appears to be something of a “white man’s lament” at the loss of “traditional” America:

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

Buchanan is not the first conservative to incorporate these concepts in their critique of the Obama administration. But Buchanan scores the trifecta of hyperbole by collating race, class, and fear of “The Other” in his lament.

And he proves himself once again to have the historical sense of a marmoset about America. What is America ever been about but change? I’ve said it many times, and it is born out by even a cursory understanding of the thrust of American history; this is a nation on the move, has been on the move, and will always be on the move as long as we are free.

We stand still for nothing, for nobody - no institution, no philosophy, no group, industry, or movement. To be static in America means that you are already on your way out. We reinvent ourselves at the drop of a hat, with impossible speed. What takes European democracies decades, we do in one or two election cycles. It is frightening. It is marvelous. It is the defining characteristic of this country and it is one of those things that makes us exceptional.

I know what Buchanan is trying to say - he’s not saying it well and he is mixing a witches brew of politics and racial identity in with his critique. What he refers to as “traditional America” is defined by his enemies as white America. But if we are to postulate that Buchanan’s “traditional Americans” are upset because we have an African American president and preferences for minorities, doesn’t that make “traditional Americans” themselves racist by definition?

Beware, a trap Mr. Serwer:

I’d love to just leave this post with snark, but I have to say one last thing. Black Americans have shed blood in every American war since the Revolution. This country, even the very Capitol building in which today’s legislators now demand to see the birth certificate of the first black president, was built on the sweat and sinew of slaves. Before we were people in the eyes of the law, before we had the right to vote, before we had a black president, we were here, helping make this country as it is today. We are as American as it gets. And frankly, the time of people who think otherwise is passing. If that’s the country Buchanan wants to hold onto, well, he’s right, he is losing it.

Did Mr. Serwer not just define “traditional” Americans?” I believe he did. Race, or gender, or sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether one is a “traditional American.” Some may believe that Buchanan is limiting himself to the white race, but his critique echoes in those communities where “traditional American” is broadly defined as anyone who respects and reveres the first principles upon this nation was founded; among them - self reliance, a respect for individual rights, and the investment of the nation’s sovereignty in the Constitution. One doesn’t need to be a conservative to believe in the traditional American values Buchanan believes are disappearing. And it is insulting, as Mr. Serwer points out, to limit the idea of traditional American to one race.

The question then becomes not whether Buchanan is a racist but whether he’s right. As usual, Buchanan overstates the case but hits upon something that critics ignore at their peril.

It is the pace of change that has people of many races, many backgrounds worried. If it were only tea partiers and loudmouths at town hall meetings, the sense of unease that runs the length and breadth of the land would not be so obvious - obvious enough to be reflected in poll numbers and soon, at the ballot box. It is difficult to argue that the pace of change doesn’t matter or that traditional Americans are not worried that the many changes being proposed by the president cannot be shoehorned into their vision of what America is supposed to be all about.

You can argue that African Americans as a group are less critical, or that the Hispanic community may not be as worried about the pace of change as white Americans. But to dismiss this phenomenon as a white only construct is naive. To do so identifies the critic as someone too enamored in viewing the nation’s problems through the prism of race and racism.

This plays to the idea that many whites are subconsciously racist - that when they lament the passing of an America with which they are familiar, what they are really saying is, “I don’t like that black man as president:”

I agree with the substance of Adam’s case against Pat Buchanan; the vision that Buchanan is putting forth of America is both racist and ahistorical, and is genuinely dismissive of the contributions of every non-white American (not to mention women, immigrants, and so forth). At the same time, I think that there’s more going on; Buchanan has always been more willing than most conservative pundits to make forthright, and in some sense honest, defenses of unpalatable elements of the right wing worldview. I recall at some point in the 1990s that Buchanan was asked why the United States was willing to sacrifice treasure for Bosnia and not Rwanda, and he gave the straightforward answer that Rwandans weren’t white enough.

In this case, I think that Buchanan is invoking a genuine sense of loss of entitlement on the part of a substantial portion of white America. This isn’t to defend or justify the white privilege that created this entitlement entailed, or to justify Pat Buchanan’s nostalgia for it. Nevertheless, I think that Buchanan is pointing to something that’s very real, or at least as real as any sociological fact. White America, as the construct exists in the mind of many Americans, is disappearing, even by some objective criteria; it’s retreating deeper into exurban communities, and it’s very, very slowly ceding political and financial power. Moreover, the idea of America is changing; Buchanan has a very definite vision of what America is, and is smart enough to understand that his vision is losing traction. In this context, it’s hardly surprising that the response is a combination of rage and raw panic. That the ideological structure that supports White America is racist and has a disturbing narrative of American history is academically relevant, but it’s also not the central point. Those who hold Buchanan’s vision (and many do, although often not in terms as explicit as Pat is willing to put forth) really do find themselves under siege, and pointing out that these beliefs are both crazy and immoral has very limited effect.

Spoken like a true determinist. Positing the notion that white Americans obsess about race, or their “entitlement” makes sense if you believe the rush to create a different kind of America doesn’t involve a radical movement away from what all races, all creeds who believe in “traditional America” see as fundamentally important to their identity. How do those black and Hispanic veterans who shed blood in our wars view the president’s foreign policy? Or do the black and Hispanic communities march in lockstep with the idea of national health insurance? Bail outs for big banks and corporations? A larger federal role in educating their children? A radical restructuring of our energy policy?

A determinist can ascribe all of this to white racism because looking at the country through the warped vision of racial conflict, everything becomes explainable as “loss” defined as privilege or status. People don’t think that way, have never thought that way, will not act in that fashion as evidenced by the fact that Communism is, for all intents and purposes, dead. This phenomenon resists a deterministic explanation. We must look to history for answers.

It has never been that white America, or traditionalists of any kind have been resistant to all change, everywhere, all the time. There have been pockets of resistance throughout our history to change (some larger than others, as was the case in southern resistance to integration). The social history of America is replete with examples of a “brake” being placed on change that turned out to be both necessary and good.

But unless you are willing to argue that “traditionalists” wish to see Jim Crow reestablished or women denied the right to vote, you must accept the fact that rapid change, while causing some dislocation, is nevertheless accepted by tradtionalists eventually. This does not mean that southern whites were correct in resisting integration, or men were spot on in their opposition to a woman’s right to vote. But in a nation that can alter its political landscape every four years, some anchors must be recognized if change that is proposed is to be folded into our national consciousness and become part of our national character.

Looking at the long view of history, I find it absolutely astonishing that in my youth, a black man couldn’t get a sandwich at a southern coffee shop and yet, I live in a time where an African American received more white votes for president than his party’s predecessor.

Is it the position of critics that this miracle was accomplished without the traditionalists? I beg to differ. I believe it was the traditionalist’s eventual acceptance of racial integration - begrudging though it might have been - that made the election of Barack Obama possible. And the fact that we have gone from Jim Crow to an African American president in less than one human lifetime only points more strongly to the idea of American exceptionalism and the idea that rapid change, when governed by applying first principles - in this case, equality for all - will eventually be accepted even by those who oppose the change in the first place.

Mr. Serwer rejects the findings of the Democracy Corps focus groups that race plays a small part in opposition to the president because it doesn’t feed his thesis that Buchanan (and Limbaugh) are explicitly lamenting a “loss” to white America as the result of the election of a black man.

I don’t doubt that there is an element of racism - clear, nauseating, and shocking - that is a significant part of Obama hate. But limiting one’s critique to a purely racial explanation belies the fact that traditionalists (sometimes incoherently) are more concerned about the president severing connections to the past than any non-acceptance that a black man can be president, or that the very fact that a black man sits in the White House gives them cause to lament their being marginalized in this “new” America.

I am not accusing Mr. Serwer of deliberately misinterpreting Buchanan’s critique. But rejecting out of hand empirical evidence that your own critique is off base smacks of partisanship, not rigorous analysis.

President Obama ran on a platform of change. He is giving his supporters exactly what they voted for. But from recent poll numbers, it is clear that even many of those who voted for Mr. Obama are feeling uneasy about what he is doing, that he is moving too quickly in some areas, without giving proper respect to the principles that America was founded upon or the “traditions” if you will that binds this nation as one. Whether they are white, black, brown, or purple matters not. And those who seek to muddy the waters by making opposition to the president’s idea of change a question of race hate are missing the boat.

I support health care reform. Not most of what the Democrats have been pushing as “reform,” but I agree that the system needs serious overhauling.

We need to insure those who want insurance but can’t afford it. We need to insure those who can’t get insurance, who need insurance, but are denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. We desperately need to put downward pressure on the cost curve for health care, not only for those with private insurance but for those who are in government programs.

And we need to reform Medicare and Medicaid or we will go bankrupt.

The question is, to my mind, how much “reform” should we be attempting at one time, and whether the process we are witnessing now will make things better or make them worse.

It is things like this that have convinced me that we are legislatively overreaching on reform and that it is an impossibility that this process will produce a bill that will make things better:

Democrats on the Finance Committee, citing a Committee precedent, argued that the Baucus bill was more understandable in conceptual language than in legislative language, and pointed out that the Baucus bill was never more than one of two bills informing the final product in the Senate – that new bill, which merges the Finance bill with the more liberal HELP Committee bill, is being written behind closed doors.

Baucus, lead HELP Democrat Chris Dodd and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are set to meet this evening with representatives from the White House to chart their progress.

In other words – the Finance Committee worked for months to create a bill, which was then set aside as Democratic leaders went about writing it all over again.

The fact that the Baucus bill has been shelved as Democrats go about the bill merger process did not keep some poor soul at the Committee office from having to take the Baucus bill’s conceptual language and turn it into legislative language.

The result, with larger font and margins and double spacing, swells the product from 262 pages to 1,502.

As the article points out, the Baucus bill is deader than a mackerel, although I have no doubt some compromises worked out with moderates will survive - at least until conference committee.

But seriously, what can you say about a process that produces such a behemoth? I do not hold out much hope that the final product produced in conference will be much shorter. In fact, I think there’s a great chance that it will be even longer, even more complicated.

The reason for the bill’s length is that so many compromises had to be made and tidbits added to accommodate individual member’s concerns on the committee. What do you think a final bill will look like that will have to accommodate the many factions in the Democratic caucus? Some of the issues will have to be finessed in order to cobble together a majority. The potential for confusion and even contradiction is self evident in this process which leads me to the thrust of my objection.

The Congress is abdicating its legislative responsibility by overreaching on health care reform. There is no possible way that any member will be able to know what exactly is in the final bill, nor can we expect any member to be able to intelligently examine the legislation in order to come to a rational decision on whether they should vote for it or not.

Essentially, the Congress is throwing up its hands and tossing the health care reform bill into the laps of bureaucrats. It is they who will have to take this monstrosity and write the regulations that will govern 1/6 of our economy - all the players, the companies, the boards, agencies, departments, programs, and people who will have to deal in the real world with what Congress has wrought.

Now, to give bureaucrats their due, I’m sure they will do the best job they can, according to their lights, in interpreting whatever mess the Congress throws at them. I have no doubt that most are public spirited folk, patriotic and hard working, and very good at what they do.

But that’s beside the point. We didn’t elect bureaucrats to make law, we elected our representatives to do that. And the process we are witnessing on health care reform is not lawmaking, it is horse trading. The concepts, and mandates, and radical changes being proposed in the insurance industry are absolutely unprecedented and nobody - repeat, nobody - knows how any of it will play out in real life. Nobody knows how these changes will affect individuals. Nobody knows if the bill, in its totality, will help bring down costs or send them skyward.

Given the intimate, vital nature of reforming a system that is responsible for the life and death of 300 million people, don’t we owe it to ourselves to be as careful, and as thoughtful as possible? I challenge anyone to prove that the process we are witnessing now is “careful and thoughtful.” It has become a process not to reform health care as much as it has morphed into a process to get something - anything - passed.

As an historical example, take Reagan’s massive tax bill. That bill also ran over a thousand pages. That bill also became an exercise in vote trolling as member after member put in their little goodies, payoffs to get their votes. “A Christmas tree” was the way it was described. Budget Director David Stockman remarked “the hogs were really feeding.” All that extra horse trading resulted in a massive increase in the budget deficit and a tripling of the federal debt when both Reagan and the Congress refused to make the budget cuts necessary to get spending under control.

But that was just money. Now we’re talking about the quality of ordinary citizen’s lives not to mention actual life and death decisions. This is why the best possible outcome of all this would be failure.

Scrap comprehensive reform and rework a bill that would address some Medicare cost issues as well as perhaps opening insurance exchanges at the state level where risk could be pooled and policies sold at reasonable prices to those who want and need insurance. This could be done by offering everyone the opportunity to purchase bare bones plans that would protect them from catastrophic illness, while also selling more comprehensive plans tailored to specific needs. Perhaps these plans could be subsidized so that their cost was reasonable. Also, the idea of using Medicaid to insure some of the uninsured should be seriously examined - as long as states weren’t left holding the bag on costs.

Since Obamacare sets such a low benchmark for success (CBO says the HELP plan would still see 17 million without insurance in 10 years), such a series of small, but significant reforms would address two vital aspects of the problem while getting the ball rolling on comprehensive Medicare reform.

The state exchanges would not be easy to set up, but much easier than the public option. Medicare reform will be politically tough but its got to be done anyway. Perhaps incremental reform is the answer there as well.

I just can’t see any bill emerging from this process being anything except a real world nightmare for our health care system. That’s why I think it time to…

Stop. Think. Go back. Won’t happen, but it should.

It may indeed, be a “different reality” that the base inhabits than the rest of us. But it is a reality that will probably spell the salvation of the Republican party.

That’s what I’m getting from the results of this fascinating series of focus groups carried out by Democracy Corps, James Carville’s think tank-polling outfit.

I suppose I should once again point out (if I don’t include this, my righty critics would be disappointed) that not everything that comes from the left is a partisan lie. Only those who see the world through the prism of excessive ideology believe that. I will say that anything one reads from the right or left should be evaluated on its merits, accepting or rejecting information based on its relative truth and honesty. Any other approach to processing information is useless, or worse - deliberately self-deluding.

Now that I have the usual disclaimer out of the way, just what does Democracy Corps mean when they talk about a “different reality” inhabited by the conservative base?

The Republican base voters are not part of the continuum leading to the center of the electorate: they truly stand apart. For additional perspective, Democracy Corps conducted a parallel set of groups in suburban Cleveland. These groups, comprised of older, white, non-college independents and weak partisans, represent some of the most conservative swing voters in the electorate,[1] and they demonstrated a wholly different worldview from Republican base voters by dismissing the fear of “socialism” and evaluating Obama in very different terms. Most importantly, regardless of their personal feelings toward Obama or how they voted in 2008, they very much want to see him succeed because they believe the country desperately needs the change he promised in his campaign. Though we kept discussion points constant between the two sets of groups, on virtually every point of discussion around President Obama and the major issues facing our country, these two audiences simply saw the world in fundamentally different ways – underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters.

Just to show that I am not a complete moron, I think Carville et. al are overstating the enthusiasm that independents have for Obama’s agenda. But that doesn’t make their entire analysis untrue. Polls reflect a desire by a substantial majority that Obama “succeed.” They may be opposed to Obamacare, but still wish to see reform. They may oppose cap and trade, but wish to see a coherent energy policy.

The base doesn’t want to see anything done by Obama that would give him a success. Their worldview is so twisted by partisanship and ideology that the real disconnect occurs in viewing what the president is trying to do:

First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

This concern combines with a profound sense of collective identity. In our conversations, it was striking how these voters constantly characterized themselves as part of a group of individuals who share a set of beliefs, a unique knowledge, and a commitment of opposition to Obama that sets them apart from the majority of the country. They readily identify themselves as a minority in this country – a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites. They also believe they possess a level of knowledge and understanding when it comes to politics and current events, one gained from a rejection of the mainstream media and an embrace of conservative media and pundits such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, which sets them apart even more. Further, they believe this position leaves them with a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love. Their faith in this country and its ideals leave them confident that their numbers will grow, and that they will ultimately defeat Barack Obama and the shadowy forces driving his hidden agenda.

Anyone who is familiar at all with commenters on the internet and especially, the words and thoughts expressed by Beck and Limbaugh knows that this is 100% true. The thing is, some of what they believe is correct; the mocking of their beliefs and values by elites and liberals is not imagined. Of course, part of the problem is that these beliefs and values are squeezed through a paranoid worldview which is so far beyond reality that it becomes easy to slight them.

But what do conservative, less ideological independents believe?

Looking at the current political debate, it was evident in our focus group discussions that the divide between conservative Republicans and even the most conservative-leaning independents remains very, very wide. Independents like those in our suburban Cleveland groups harbor doubts about Obama’s health care reform but are desperate to see some version of health care reform pass this year; the conservative Republicans view any health care reform as a victory for Obama and are militantly opposed. Asked about the issues of greatest importance to them in choosing a candidate for Congress, health care ranked sixth among the Republicans, below issues such as tax cuts, immigration, and a candidate’s personal values and faith; but for the independents, health care was number one.

The language they use further reflects this divide. Conservative Republicans fully embrace the ‘socialism’ attacks on Obama and believe it is the best, most accurate way to describe him and his agenda. Independents largely dismiss these attacks as partisan rhetoric detracting from a legitimate debate about what many of them do see as excessive government control and spending.

There simply is no way to connect the conservative base with those who see the world in much less partisan, and real terms. Readers of this site know that I have tried to point this out - usually in none-too-gentle terms. But the base dismisses my criticism out of hand. They believe their poisonous worldview will not harm the GOP at the polls and that anyone who doesn’t think in such paranoid terms is not a conservative anyway.

One surprise for my lefty friends; race has little or nothing to do with the hard right’s opposition to Obama:

In the wake of Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during the president’s joint session health care address and other strident personal and political attacks against President Obama, many in the media and Democratic circles advanced an explanation that this virulent opposition is rooted in racism and reactions to President Obama as an African American president. With this possibility in mind, we allowed for extended open-ended discussion on Obama (including visuals of him speaking) among voters – older, non-college, white, and conservative – who were most race conscious and score highest on scales measuring racial prejudice. Race was barely raised, certainly not what was bothering them about President Obama.

In fact, some of these voters talked about feeling some pride at his election.

They were conscious of the charge that opposition to Obama is racially motivated and that bothered conservative Republicans and independents alike. They basically could not let it go and returned to this issue again and again throughout our conversations across myriad topics

What then, to make of this disconnect between hard core Obama-hating conservatives and less ideological independent conservatives?

It is heartening that the independent righties are open to valid, substantive critiques of Obama’s agenda. They would almost certainly be open to a candidate who eschewed far right rhetoric about Obama’s agenda and concentrated on promoting positive ideas to address their concerns. As we’ve seen in recent polls, indies are abandoning Obama in large numbers - at least for now. They are upset with his radical spending, and the specifics of health care reform as well as other issues being advanced by the White House.

Of course, the right may give these independents nowhere to go in 2010 and 2012 unless the GOP can show that they are capable of governing rather than simply obstructing. I think independents are sophisticated enough to understand why the GOP cannot go along with Obamacare in its proposed form. But Republicans must present alternatives that are realistic and achievable if they hope to make the kinds of gains necessary to challenge for leadership.

Peggy Noonan has a brilliant column in today’s Wall Street Journal that speaks to the reality the rest of the country lives in:

In the days of the New Deal, in the 1930s, government growth was virgin territory. It was like pushing west through a continent that seemed new and empty. There was plenty of room to move. The federal government was still small and relatively lean, the income tax was still new. America pushed on, creating what it created: federal programs, departments and initiatives, Social Security. In the mid-1960s, with the Great Society, more or less the same thing. Government hadn’t claimed new territory in a generation, and it pushed on—creating Medicare, Medicaid, new domestic programs of all kinds, the expansion of welfare and the safety net.

Now the national terrain is thick with federal programs, and with state, county, city and town entities and programs, from coast to coast. It’s not virgin territory anymore, it’s crowded. We are a nation fully settled by government. We are well into the age of the welfare state, the age of government. We know its weight, heft and demands, know its costs both in terms of money and autonomy, even as we know it has made many of our lives more secure, and helped many to feel encouragement.

But we know the price now. This is the historical context. The White House often seems disappointed that the big center, the voters in the middle of the spectrum, aren’t all that excited about following them on their bold new journey. But it’s a world America has been to. It isn’t new to us. And we don’t have too many illusions about it.

I don’t make this clear enough in my critiques of the base; I sympathize with their desire to vastly shrink the size of government. I think, as they do, that there should be a greater emphasis on federalism, that conservative leadership is needed to get the federal budget under control and that some kind of cost-benefit analysis of federal programs should be undertaken in earnest.

But I don’t think their vision of what government should be is realistic or even desirable. Noonan has articulated a reality that is simply denied by many on the right. A “terrain” that is “thick with federal programs” and includes state and local governmental entities cannot be dismantled without huge dislocations, pain, and catastrophic results.

If one returns to the “original intent” of the Constitution - a document written when the US was a coastal nation of 7 million people - in order to create a “small” government, the result would be devastation. It is better that “original principles” be applied to our current structure in order to rationally address the idea of “smaller” government. Adherence to such principles would logically lead to more federalism, less intrusive government, and a salutary effect on values like self-reliance and membership in a truly “voluntary community.”

I am aware of what Hayek believed that any accommodation with the state was simply delaying the inevitable as far as citizens becoming “serfs.” And I am cognizant of the political argument that sees embracing the welfare state created by the New Deal and the Great Society as merely aping the Democrats and not offering the voter a choice at all.

There may be something to both of those criticisms. But there has to be something better than the skewed reality that most of the base inhabits - many of whom having no trouble with taking a great leap backward and supporting some kind of idealized Jeffersonian government with yeoman farmers and heroic entrepreneurs thriving in a near “state of nature” government. This is what happens when you see government as the enemy. Beyond national defense and a few favored programs, there wouldn’t be any government to speak of at all.

The obvious spin put on some of the conclusions from the Democracy Corps focus groups doesn’t affect their obvious conclusion; there is a great divide in how many in the conservative base see the world and how the rest of us view it. It may mean that it will drag the GOP back toward espousing conservative principles. That might mean the salvation of the party.

But it if also means espousing the paranoid fantasies and bitter partisanship advanced by the hard right, it will spell eventual disaster for the party and make conservatism itself irrelevant in the national conversation.

No, Limbaugh is no racist. He’s a blowhard. He’s a conservative poseur. He’s a racial provocateur. He’s a rabble rousing polemicist.

But Rush, God love him, would find no advantage to being a racist and hence, doesn’t even try to play one on the radio. In fact, it is amusing that as always, Limbaugh knows exactly what buttons to push that sends his enemies into orbit.

Now, it is apparent his foes have gone a smear too far and actually invented some “Rushisms” out of whole cloth - with predictable results, as Limbaugh has been able to use the lies about him to both instruct his listeners in media bias (you’d think after 20 years his audience would get it), as well as generate sympathy from people like me who can’t stand him but hate the rank dishonesty and evocation of nauseating racial politics of some on the left even more.

But the real kicker in this brouhaha over Limbaugh’s purported effort to become an NFL owner is the uproariously funny spectacle of NFL owners and players solemnly opining on Limbaugh’s supposed divisive words and bad behavior.

When did the NFL become the gold standard of tolerance and diversity? And since when did the NFL Players Association and its nearly 200 members who have been charged with felonies in the last decade become the arbiter of moral wholesomeness?

The National Football League was the last major professional sports organization to hire a black coach. Art Shell was hired in 1988 to coach the Oakland Raiders. It took them 4 years to hire a second - Dennis Green of the Vikings. All told, there have been 10 African American coaches in the entire history of the league. That compares to 49 black coaches in NBA history and 22 in Major League baseball.

And these guys are worried about Limbaugh?

The NBA and pro baseball had programs in place to seek out minority hires in management about a decade before the NFL even broke the color barrier. It took the league another decade to reluctantly adopt a policy to promote minorities on the field. It was ordered that any head coaching vacancy would require at least one minority candidate to be interviewed. Predictably, there were loud complaints that the whole policy was a dog and pony show because the number of black head coaches never increased.

It was left to individual do gooders - Bill Walsh was prominent in the movement to increase minority hires - to take it upon themselves to do something about this embarrassingly shameful situation. With no help from the owners, black assistant coaches began to slowly fill the ranks of NFL teams and got their shots at the big chair.

So when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell can actually face the cameras with a straight face and say something like this, my hypocrisy meter starts going off the scale:

Commissioner Roger Goodell said here Tuesday that it would be inappropriate for the owner of an NFL franchise to make the sort of controversial statements attributed in the past to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

“I’ve said many times before we’re all held to a high standard here, and I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about,” Goodell said at an NFL owners’ meeting. “I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL, absolutely not.”

Limbaugh has acknowledged being part of a group bidding for the St. Louis Rams.

Goodell and several owners said Tuesday that the Rams’ sale process is in its early stages and the league is far from considering a potential bid by Limbaugh and Dave Checketts, the chairman of hockey’s St. Louis Blues.

But any proposed franchise sale would have to be approved by three-quarters of the owners, and Goodell’s comments signaled that it perhaps would be unlikely that Limbaugh’s bid would be ratified by the other teams.

“Divisive comments?” How about Falcons owner Arthur Blank on the prospects for the return of convicted dog torturer Michael Vick?

“If Michael makes a mistake and eats fried chicken and French fries in prison every day and comes out at 250 pounds, he’s not going to be able to play football,” Blank said. “

Now, anyone in public life who utters the words “fried chicken” as it relates to a black man is usually skewered over an open spit. The racialists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton scream bloody murder. But because no one wanted to be in the position of defending the monster Vick, Blank got something of a pass. (As well he should have.)

Well, since he’s part of the club already, Blank doesn’t get called on the carpet. But the fact remains that only liberal universities have a worse record at hiring African American coaches. As of today, there are exactly 4 major college coaches out of 119 schools.

And what of the professional sports criminal element? I’m speaking of the NFL players - 471 and counting have been arrested since 2000. For any of them to open their mouths about Rush Limbaugh and judge him is too absurd for words. The resistance by the NFL Players Association to ferreting out illegal steroid and other drug use puts them in no position to be commenting about anyone’s morals.

Late word is that Limbaugh will apparently be dropped from the Checketts group. Just as well. Limbaugh may very well have embarrassed the league at some point as he pushes the envelope of outrageousness ever farther in search of ratings and ad revenue. But for the hypocrites in the NFL to worry about Limbaugh’s racial agitation when their own sorry ass record is so profoundly disturbing, it gives a whole new meaning to the “pot-kettle” analogy.

There are several commentators who are tossing around the idea that this situation is so outrageous (or simply undeserved at this point) that the president should humbly decline to accept the prize.

I don’t think that is realistic, but some of the reasons given resonate.

On the right, Yuval Levin:

The prize, and the question, also risk awakening with a vengeance the notorious good sense of the American public, and its democratic intolerance for pompous arrogance and nonsense. In its fatigue with Republicans, and its unease with John McCain’s erratic and empty campaign, the voting public gave Obama a comfortable victory last year, but only the young and the silly really went in for the whole cult of personality. It has seemed at several telling moments this year, however, as though Obama himself and his circle were among those that believed it all, and remain so: Their enormous faith in the power of Obama as a messenger and presence, the sense that the world would change its attitude about America simply because he was there, the endless stream of first person pronouns. We might have thought the falling poll ratings would check this attitude somewhat, but Obama’s words and deeds — the Olympics fiasco, for instance — suggest otherwise. Now this odd moment could force the administration to face the matter one way or another. It compels all reasonably sensible people to say “come on, really?!” and it challenges Obama and his circle to assure the country that they are not delusional. It’s hard to know quite what the right response would be, but it would probably require a self-effacing show of humility (including declining the prize) that our president may not even be able to fake, let alone actually exhibit. It is a dangerous thing for a president to become a joke, and between his Olympic Committee trip and this peculiar honor, he’s getting there fast, and in a way that could do him real harm.

I wonder if any commentator, anywhere on the political spectrum, will offer a genuine straight-faced defense or case for this prize. Whoever does will no-doubt win next year’s Nobel Prize for literature.

Actually, a survey by NBI just came out that showed America being the most admired country in the world again. I have no doubt that is the direct result of President Obama being elected - as well as his humble approach to foreign policy that, by his own admission, seeks to minimize the power of his own country.

But Yuval is on to something. The reaction is almost universally one of astonishment - at least among ordinary people. All but the most mindless Obamabots are surprised and not a little puzzled. There is gladness on the left, but it is not universal nor is it uncritical of the committee.

John Dickerson of Slate:

Having worked at Time magazine when it occasionally named a Person of the Year who evoked a similar “Huh?” reaction, I recognize this language: It the sound of words groaning for a rationale. The committee can, of course, pick whomever it wants. But in his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

“Shall have done,” seems a tricky piece of language to write around. This makes the committee’s statement sounds more like a wish list. It’s not that Obama has done nothing. It’s that so much about his presidency is preliminary. (I’m not counting the beer summit.) Other recipients—Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, and Lech Walesa—seem more aptly to hit the “have done” mark. Others who might not be household names, like Muhammad Yunus, make sense on inspection.

On the other hand, Obama may fit the bill more than some other recipients. At least he hasn’t actively been engaged in making warfare, as were previous recipients Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat. Then again, Obama is considering whether to send more troops into Afghanistan, one of America’s two wars.

That is disingenuous by Dickerson. Obama has personally ordered drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed dozens if not hundreds of civilians. As the Nobel Committee was making up his mind, the president has been contemplating sending more troops to Afghanistan. There is a chance that in the coming months, we will have to reengage in Iraq to some degree.

And is bombing Iran completely off the table?

But even Dickerson recognizes the fact that there is nothing in particular that the president has accomplished that merits this high honor. And comparison to other winners certainly falls flat, doesn’t it?

This may sound overly harsh, but there are people who have risked their lives for peace, have stood up to the same thugs and tyrants that Obama is embracing, who have gone into war zones and sought to mediate conflicts, and who have, with great courage, stood up against the forces of darkness in order to bring light to the innocent.

And Obama is elevated above these? Here’s a small sampling of obviously more deserving people from Mary Katherine Ham at the Weekly Standard:

Sima Samar, women’s rights activist in Afghanistan: “With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women’s Affairs.”

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: “These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon.”

“Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for ‘inciting subversion of state power.’”

“Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. He now lives in the United States.”

“Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence.”

Any one of these courageous individuals would have been a more inspirational choice than someone who talks a good game but has done nothing to back up his words at any risk to himself whatsoever.

Michael Binyon at the TimesOnline:

The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

A rather harsh assessment but unless you are totally in the tank for the guy, it is difficult to argue with its conclusions. One thing that is arguable is the notion that this is causing “consternation” in many capitols. From what I can see, most governments are sending words of congratulations. How they really think may be another matter. But given how the president has now been encouraged in his program to de-emphasize American power and subsume our interests to those of other nations, I can’t see them being too full of “consternation” for Obama’s continued quest to downgrade our power and influence on the world stage.

The president will not turn the prize down. Nor do I think he should. He is being rewarded for the kind of foreign policy choices that sit well with a world that is enamored of gestures and atmospherics. This kind of foreign policy works very well - as long as no one challenges the comfortable illusions it represents.

There will come a time in the next 8 years when most of those congratulating the president’s weakening of American power and influence will have need of her strength. And when that day comes - as it always has given the history of the last 100 years - those in need of that strength are simply going to be Sh*t out of Luck.

UPDATE: IN THE INTEREST OF FAIRNESS…

This is from Robert Naiman at Huffpo and is the first take I’ve read in support of the award that actually makes sense:

The Nobel Committee gave South African Bishop Desmond Tutu the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership of efforts to abolish apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid wasn’t fully abolished in South Africa until 1994. The committee could have waited until after apartheid was abolished to say, “Well done!” But the point of the award was to help bring down apartheid by strengthening Bishop Tutu’s efforts. In particular, everyone knew that it was going to be much harder for the apartheid regime to crack down on Tutu after the Nobel Committee wrapped him in its protective cloak of world praise.

That’s what the Nobel Committee is trying to do for Obama now. It’s giving an award to encourage the change in world relations that Obama has promised, and to try to help shield Obama against his domestic adversaries.

Interesting that Mr. Naiman sees it as a plus that the Nobel Committee would see fit to interfere in our domestic politics. In fact, he seems downright satisfied that foreigners want to butt their noses into our business. (Wonder how he’d feel if they did something similar for a conservative Republican?)

Other than that, however, his analysis makes sense.

Originally, I was just going to repost my AT blog post on the news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

But those of you who read what I write both there and here are aware that I put a little harder edge on what I write at American Thinker than at RWNH.

I think most honest observers on the right and left would have to agree that President Obama has no concrete accomplishments that would make him deserving of this honor. A perusal of the list of past winners would make Obama stand out as the only recipient who never negotiated any agreement, didn’t intervene to prevent bloodshed, never put his personal popularity on the line to push through an important treaty, didn’t risk his life to bring peace to his own war torn country, or any other criteria previously used in Nobel citations that would place him on par with those so honored in the past.

In order to give President Obama this award, the Nobel Committee had to lower the bar:

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

“Extraordinary” efforts? He has been in office 9 months - almost completely absorbed in domestic affairs. The word “extraordinary” in this case rings hollow indeed.

And what about the committee attaching “special importance” to President Obama’s “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons?” You don’t have to oppose the president to raise an eyebrow there. Activists have spent their entire lives working toward that “vision” - many of them prominent statesmen and personalities. And President Obama is recognized for his johnny come lately efforts - or I should make that “effort” since his one day dog and pony show as chairing a Security Council meeting on the subject constitutes his only exertion toward that goal.

The Nobel committee has simply lowered the bar in order to award the president his honor. Even compared to other presidents who have received this award, Obama’s efforts and most especially his accomplishments, just don’t stack up.

Teddy Roosevelt got his peace prize for mediating between Japan and Russia and ending their bloody war. Woodrow Wilson got his for his efforts at peace after World War I. Jimmy Carter - whatever else you can say about him - engineered a singular, personal triumph with the Camp David accords which was the first peace agreement between Israel and another Arab state.

What’s Obama done? What peace has he negotiated? What efforts of his have born fruit?

The news could just as easily be a Saturday Night Live comedy skit or a Mad Magazine layout. If it had appeared in either one of those venues yesterday, it would have seemed a ripe subject for satire and humor. I daresay even many liberals would have laughed at the notion of Obama getting the Nobel for peace.

Is there a possibility that this is an effort to meddle in our domestic politics? Setting the president up as an international demigod certainly plays into his cult-like status here in the US. I have no doubt it will boost his approval ratings and could supply a little impetus for health care reform. And 2012? Too soon to say what impact it might have there but it couldn’t hurt, could it?

Despite all this, it wouldn’t kill those of us on the right to offer congratulations to the president. For whatever reason, this is indeed a high honor and brings nothing but warm feelings from other peoples around the world to the United States. I don’t attach any real world importance to that.

But it couldn’t hurt, could it?

INTERESTING UPDATE

According to their own website, the deadline for the submission of names to be considered for the prize is February 1.

Obama was not nominated based on what he had accomplished as president because he had been in office for about 11 days.

I would add a simple, declarative WTF and leave it at that.

This is the 4th in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Here’s Part I. Part II. And Part III.

There is a terrific exchange of views on the health of conservatism over at Slate between conservative writer Reihan Salam and Sam Tannenhaus (author of Death of Conservatism). Salam is author (with Ross Douthat) of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream[ that was not very well received by movement conservatives. He is also the Schwartz Fellow at the decidedly unconservative New America Foundation.

I suppose for many on the right, this kind of background disqualifies Mr. Salam from having anything relevant to say about conservatism. No matter. I find Salam's writing to border on brilliant at times, and his insights into modern America fresh and thought provoking. I'm sure this exchange with Tannenhaus over the latter's new book will not change anyone's mind.

Salam offers a brief summary that will also familiarize readers here with the substance of Tannenhaus's book:

To summarize briefly, you offer a sharp distinction between rigidly ideological movement conservatism, which you describe as more Jacobin than Burkean in its tone and in its anti-democratic ambitions, and the more modest and restrained "Beaconsfield position" advocated by Whittaker Chambers, a man whose courage, intellect, and independence you plainly admire. These two strands, revanchist and realist, have been present throughout the history of the American right and, as you vividly demonstrate in the case of William F. Buckley Jr., often coexist in the work of leading conservative intellectuals. The book ends with the revanchists triumphant as even neoconservative intellectuals, once the arch-realists, find themselves overtaken by ideological zeal.

"Beaconsfield" refers to the peerage of Conservative Party Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) and his school of mid-19th century reform conservatism in England that embraced measures expanding the government's purview into areas where it was previously unknown. Tannenhaus admires Disraeli, holding him up as the kind of conservative to which the right should aspire. But today, he would probably be seen as a "Big Government" conservative by the base given the numerous reforms that brought government in to play a role in education, and worker safety, while committing the definite conservative no-no back then of expanding sufferage to include almost all male heads of households.

Disraeli is usually referred to as the "Father of Modern Conservatism" - and for good reason as this 2005 piece by David Gelernter makes clear:

THUS DISRAELI FOUND HIMSELF in a position to rebuild the Tory party. How did he go about it? Reverence for tradition was central to Toryism and to Disraeli's own personality. He wanted his new-style Tory party to embody respect for tradition--wanted it to be new and old, to be a modern setting for ancient gems, a new crown displaying old jewels. This was a popular idea in 19th-century Britain, where "the future" and "the past" were both discovered, simultaneously.

Disraeli's approach was like Barry and Pugin's in designing a new home for Parliament. The old one burned to the ground (except for a magnificent medieval hall and a few odds and ends) in 1834. The new structure, it was decided, should be built of modern materials and work like a modern building with all the conveniences--but should look medieval. The intention wasn't play-acting or aesthetic fraud; it was to use the best ideas of the past and present alongside each other.

The result was wildly successful, one of history's greatest public buildings. Disraeli aimed to accomplish something similar for the Tory party. His underlying thought, which defined Disraeli-type Toryism and reshaped conservatism for all time, was that the Conservative party was the national party. Sounds simple and is. But everything else followed. If you understood "national" properly, then (on the one hand) the Tories must be a democratic, "universal," progressive party that cared about the poor and working classes--since the party was national it must care for the whole nation, for all classes. But the Tories must also be a patriotic party that revered ancient traditions and institutions, again inasmuch as they were the national--and therefore honored profoundly the nation's heritage and distinctive character.

He put it like this:

"In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines."

I present intellectual conservatism at its most lucid and sublime.

Perhaps here is where the schism between movement conservatives and reformists is most pronounced; the very idea of "change." Not the revanchist view that the United States should return to some unrealistic, impossible to achieve, 19th century "small government" paradise - before there was a New Deal or Great Society. But rather the idea that conservatism at its best manages change so that ultimately, it is based on the traditions - "the manners, the customs, the laws" - that are the best of any society.

Even Russell Kirk embraced this view of change in his 10th Conservative Principle:

Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.

[...]

Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.

I would hope that our liberal friends read the preceding and understand why conservatives cannot and will not support the Obama version of national health care reform. It is decidedly not connected to our traditions, or our customs, and in no way can be supported since it posits “change” as some kind of mythical “progress.”

Neither, however, should many on the right believe that change should always be opposed simply out of opposition to the majority. This is mindless nihilism, and is also decidedly “unconservative” if you believe that society should be constantly trying to improve itself.

I took this detour into Disraeli and the notion of “change” because it is at the heart of Tannehaus’s critique; that movement conservatism has short circuited the connection between intellectuals and themselves by rejecting logic and reason, substituting paranoia and an incipient anti-intellectualism in its stead.

Salam responds this way:

I have a slightly different interpretation of conservatism’s excesses. For good reason, you place the conservative intelligentsia at the heart of your story. I tend to think intellectuals belong on the margins. The revanchism you lament is not the invention of conservative elites. My view is that it is rooted in the considered judgments of a small but intense and vocal minority of American voters, many of whom are white evangelical Christians living in the Southern United States. As labor economist Stephen Rose argued in 2006, these are voters who are very tax-sensitive; they tend to settle in regions with a low cost of living, where self-reliance seems more plausible than it does from my vantage point as a lifelong city dweller. Social conservatism arguably has a totemic significance; because rural red America suffers from scandalously high rates of divorce, the sanctity of marriage is a live issue. Far from resenting public moralism, the voters I have in mind consider it a vital part of a decent, well-governed society.

What you see as conservative decline strikes me as a structural consequence of our permeable democracy. In Britain, for example, large majorities of the public back the restoration of the death penalty—more, according to some polls, than in the United States, where we’ve experienced its many downsides—but an elite cross-party consensus keeps the issue off the table. For better or for worse, our system gives the most intensely committed voters a voice that can’t be ignored. We remember the movement to impeach President Clinton as the wild-eyed crusade of out-of-touch congressional leaders, yet it was also fueled by the outrage of rank-and-file conservatives. And in a similar vein, Karl Rove never imagined that opposition to same-sex marriage would cement a permanent Republican majority. It was a distraction that I’m sure he found distasteful. President Bush himself could barely stomach talking about the issue. Yet talk about it he did, in deference to the need to press every advantage.

Is it an accident that southern evangelicals (and those who sympathize with their social agenda nationwide) are the most reliable GOP voters and play such a prominent role in conservatism today? I hesitate to agree with Tannenhaus that these grass roots conservatives exhibit reactionary traits but it is hard to escape the fact that much of the right’s social agenda - anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage (and gay rights), school prayer (”God in the public square”) - is predicated on the belief that attitudes in society that have changed to varying degrees on these issues can be rolled back. I don’t know if this is “reactionary” although I don’t believe that social conservatives are desirous of the kind of “change” that would have been supported by Disraeli or perhaps even Kirk.

I hasten to add that this doesn’t make these issues illegitimate. But they don’t represent my kind of conservatism, nor that of many others.

Tannenhaus’s response is interesting:

Actually, what you call a polemic means to be an interpretive history that makes the opposite case from the one described in your account. Revanchist conservatism did not originate as a form of populist protest. Rather, it was the brainchild of the very elites you say have no influence on our politics. It was conservative intellectuals who argued that the “managerial elite” (James Burnham), the “liberal establishment” (William Buckley), or the “new class” (Irving Kristol) had seized control of American politics and later our society. This argument, in its inverted Marxism, gave theoretical shape to the unarticulated anxieties and suspicions—anti-government, anti-institutional, antinomian—of the “small but intense and vocal minority,” many of them “white evangelical Christians,” who today populate the eroding island of movement conservatism. Even today the right insists it is driven by ideas, even if the leading thinkers are now Limbaugh and Beck, and the shock troops are tea-partiers and anti-tax demonstrators.

In other words, the movement has thrived not as a top-down operation, nor as a bottom-up one, but as a convergence of shared prejudices and cultural enmities. Thus, the right’s first great modern tribune was Joe McCarthy, whose theatrical “investigations” of “enemies within” were either endorsed or indulged by each of the intellectuals mentioned above.

The same antagonisms continued through the Bush years. Your reading of that dismal period seems rather wishful to me. Bush and Rove built their presidency on revanchism. This isn’t surprising since Rove’s number-crunching following the 2000 election—when Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 or more—suggested that the GOP ticket had failed to exploit the evangelical base that might have yielded a majority. No wonder Bush devoted so much of his presidency to courting social conservatives—remember stem cells, intelligent design, the faith-based initiative? Nor was Rove taken aback by opposition to same-sex marriage. On the contrary, he made it a centerpiece in the 2004 election. It is the politics of the excluded middle, or center, and it defines the right today on every stratum.

Tannenhaus believes that the intellectuals who supplied much of the substance and heft to conservatism in the 1970’s ended up embracing ideology as a means to political power, igniting the passions of the base by focusing on “enemies” and “antagonisms.” He calls it a “convergence” of the elites (most of whom are not intellectuals I might add) with the base. Who was driving whom? I agree more with Salam on this one. The entrance into politics of evangelicals, motivated by TV preachers like Jerry Falwell, was definitely a grass roots phenomenon and one of the more significant political events since World War II. Reagan largely gave lip service to the Christian right (as Roosevelt gave lip service to the far left agenda during his administration), and George Bush 41 stupidly rejected them.

It was left to Bush 43 to pander shamelessly to the evangelicals, increasing their power and influence, while running a corporatist, big government administration. He was supported by conservatives largely because of his social conservatism and his hawkish foreign policy. Also, the alternative of John Kerry was unpalatable to almost all on the right.

But did this “convergence” lead us to the sorry state of intellectual conservatism today? Salam replies to Tannenhaus by positing a different explanation:

And as I suggested in my first entry, I really do think that something structural is going on: In the past, the democratic marketplace was less “efficient,” and that was in a sense a very good thing for writers and thinkers and public-spirited elected officials, who had the freedom to defy movement discipline. Our more fragmented media landscape has far lower barriers to entry, and it allows passionately engaged citizens, as well as cranks, to organize and even intimidate. When you consider that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa fears a hard-right Internet-enabled primary challenge, his otherwise puzzling behavior in the health reform debate starts to make sense.

Throughout the book, you draw on political analyst Samuel Lubell to argue that America’s party system consists of a dominant sun, a majority party that sets the ideological agenda, and a minority moon. And like many observers, you suggest that after a long period of Republican dominance, during which Democrats came to embrace conservative insights as part of a new consensus, we have now entered a progressive era. And so conservatives face a choice: Either a new generation of Republican Disraelis will champion a Bismarckian welfare state, a view that Irving Kristol championed as late as 2003 (I disagree with your interpretation of the late Kristol, but I digress), or the movement will be doomed to snarling insignificance at the margins of our political life.

That’s a pretty stark choice but, I believe, an accurate one. Salam said in his first piece that he believed the anger of the base would “steadily work its way out in hundreds of thousands of roiling conversations in office parks, shopping malls, living rooms, and lecture halls.” And, I might add, the voting booth. It is there that movement conservatism will finally meet its own “Waterloo.”

I believe it inevitable that even if the GOP mounts some kind of comeback in 2010, it will be shortlived. The systemic contradictions inherent in the movement as well as a continued disconnect with the concerns of ordinary voters will spell defeat of what will almost certainly be a movement candidate for president in 2012. Then, the excuse that their candidate wasn’t “conservative enough” will ring hollow and they will be faced with the yawning chasm opening beneath their feet that their angry, paranoid, illogical worldview is not shared with many outside of the cocoon they have created for themselves.

This is the third in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Part I can be found here. Part II.

Few speechwriters of the modern era can match the record of Peggy Noonan when it comes to memorable presidential addresses. Teddy Sorenson was of a different era but managed several significant, and remembered speeches for JFK, including Kennedy’s inaugural address which is often considered one of the best. Ray Price and Pat Buchanan added a combative style to presidential addresses (Price was especially good at sticking the knife in). James Fallows penned some good speeches for Carter that were delivered atrociously.

But Noonan was lucky enough to work with a president who was not only a dynamite speaker, but a wordsmith in his own right. Her best efforts with Reagan were collaborative, as Noonan would shoot the Gipper a draft, who would return it with numerous notations and changes. She had a great sense of Reagan’s speaking cadence which was evident in one of the best speeches of the 20th century; Reagan’s D-Day address to the “Boys of Point du Hoc.” Rarely has the moment so gloriously reflected the words uttered by an American president.

But Noonan the political analyst? Most conservatives have dismissed her columns on conservatism as elitist, and not all that conservative to begin with. She has said nice things about Obama. She has said bad things about movement heroes like Rush Limbaugh. She has criticized the inchoate rage of the extreme right.

In short, she has been reasonable, pragmatic, desirous of engaging the opposition, and doesn’t see the president with horns and a tail.

Heresy, that.

Yes, Peggy Noonan is an elitist. Yes, she has misread the pull/push relationship between populists and reformers, ascribing opposition to her brand of conservatism as a nascent anti-intellectualism. She is befuddled about why the base hates her so, considering the fact that she was working for the conservative cause while most of her detractors were still in books, or not even born. This makes her somewhat pathetic in my opinion. She hasn’t much of a clue about the real conversation that is going on right now and this is reflected in her writings.

She is clueless about engaging on the internet. Her website is a simple repository for her numerous articles. She famously devoted an entire column following one of her more clueless articles, bemoaning the loss of civility in internet comments. Why anyone would be surprised in this day and age about the viciousness of anonymous posters is indicative of a kind of quaint, child like innocence about the world that is both attractive and gobsmackingly dense.

But she is still a great writer. And she usually has something to say that is somewhat relevant, although it is usually a hit or miss proposition.

Here’s a definite “miss” as she comments about the loss of William Safire:

Anyway, everyone there knew we’d suddenly lost one of the great ones, the Elders, and there is lately a sense of a changing of the guard.
***

Who are the Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They’re the oldest and wisest. By proceeding through the world each day with dignity and humanity, they show the young what it is that should be emulated. They’re the tribal chieftains. This role has probably existed since caveman days, because people need guidance and encouragement, they need to be heartened by examples of endurance. They need to be inspired.

We are in a generational shift in the media, and new Elders are rising. They’re running the networks and newspapers, they own the Web sites, they anchor the shows. What is their job?

It’s to do what the Elders have always done, but now more than ever.

You know the current media environment. You think I’m about to say, “Boy, what’s said on cable, radio and the Internet now is really harmful and dangerous.” And you’re right, and it is. Some of the ranters don’t have the faintest idea where the line is. “They keep moving the little sucker,” said the William Hurt character, the clueless and unstoppable anchorman, in “Broadcast News.” They’ve been moving the little sucker for 20 years. But it’s getting worse, and those who warn of danger are right.

This is nonsense, obviously coming from someone who is not only clueless about the “generational shift” in the media but its true significance as well. New “elders” aren’t being created. There are no more elders, or youngers, or tweeners. Such designations are irrelevant in a media landscape with literally thousands of outlets, and many thousands of writers who are just as qualified, just as smart, just as talented as Noonan herself or any other “elder” who ever lived, scratching out their opinions, paid and unpaid.

The “elders of which she writes came of age when the Saturday Evening Post was still a viable publication; when Life, Look, and Time Magazine sold tens of millions of copies; when there were perhaps a half dozen newspapers where “elders” sat on high and pontificated to the rest of us; and where there were only three gigantic TV networks.

This is not to say that excellent writing and thinking doesn’t rise to the top of the ziggurat and is recognized, or that there aren’t any writers with influence. But compared to Noonan’s “elders” the effect of today’s media stars is extremely limited. The fact that no one publication can attract millions of Americans to read what they put out is a direct cause of why print media is dying. Even syndicated columnists like Noonan, Will, Krauthammer, Samuelson, or Dowd can only reach a fraction of the readers of those who came before them.

But does Noonan have a point?

A few days ago, I was sent a link to a screed by MSNBC’s left-wing anchorman Ed Schultz, in which he explained opposition to the president’s health-care reform. “The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They’d rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for us.” Next, a link to the syndicated show of right-wing radio talker Alex Jones, on the subject of the U.S. military, whose security efforts at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh show them to be agents and lackeys of the New World Order. “They are complete enemies of America. . . . Our military’s been taken over. . . . This is the end of our country.” Later, “They’d love to kill 10,000 Americans,” and, “The republic is falling right now.”

This, increasingly, is the sound of our political conversation.

It is not new to call this kind of thing destructive, though it is. It is a daily agitating barrage that coarsens and inflames. It tears the national fabric. But it could wind up doing worse than that.

Of course she’s right. It is a fact that in order to stand out in this fractured, media multi-verse, the louder and angrier you are, the more you resonate on an emotional level with the audience.

Noonan believes this to be “dangerous.” I’m not sure of that at all. It may be sad. It may be pathetic that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck actually enjoy the respect and admiration of so many - those who think that because they “sound” like they are making sense or they “feel” that what they say is true is indicative of wisdom and logic. An entire subculture of conservatives have grown up believing that strawman arguments, hysterical exaggeration regarding one’s opponents, fear mongering, shallowness, and even hate is a substitute for reason, for thinking.

How can anyone possibly mistake this typical rant from Limbaugh for reasoned, rational, discourse?

The people that run our country now have a much closer proximity and they’re much closer to the world’s tyrants and dictators than they are closer to the people who founded the country. This is not accidental. They have chosen it. This is the ideology that they have chosen. This is what’s best for them. And you’re going to learn this if you stay focused and stay interested and keep learning as you grow older, you’re going to learn this. You’re gonna learn that they’re not innocent idiots. They are dangerous, devious central planners who have designs on everybody’s liberty and freedom. That’s what matters most to them because that’s where they derive their power.

I have to say it because Limbaugh either believes this, or knows his audience too well; he is saying all of this about our fellow Americans; that they are “closer to tyrants” than Thomas Jefferson; that they are “dangerous, devious central planners who have designs on everybody’s liberty and freedom” - as if their motives were to enslave us.

This kind of rant hits all the emotional buttons of Limbaugh’s listeners while eschewing logic and promoting fear. Nearly 20 million people listen to this crap every day and nod their heads in agreement, thinking how “true” this sounds” and how it feels like an intelligent analysis of liberalism.

Now, a visit to just about any liberal website will reveal similar things said about conservatives and conservatism. But the point made by many on the left - that Limbaugh is considered so mainstream and respected that even political leaders cower in fear of his influence with the base - is well taken. When some pissant lefty blog, or the equally invisible Olbermann/Maddow/Schultz trio at MSNBC (which is the nexus of lefty kookery) spout off about conservatives, you don’t find too many Democratic Congressman imitating them (although Alan Grayson sure tries hard, doesn’t he?).

But hey! Beck got Vann Jones fired and Rush arms his dittoheads with talking points that they can take into internet forums and chat rooms to do battle against evil. Surely there is some good that comes out of this, isn’t there?

There are those who have been telling me that conservatism needs these populizers to excite the troops and motivate them to achieve political victory. What kind of “victory” is it worth to lose your mind to gain a majority?

And that, dear readers is the bottom line. This is why it is imperative that intellectual conservatism - or at least a reasonable, hard headed, tough minded approach to political combat - is so far superior to the Limbaugh/Beck/Savage school of slash and burn, take no prisoners conservatism that dominates today.

Public intellectuals like Richard Posner, Yuval Levin, and other, younger thinkers like Conor Friedersdorf and Reihan Salam - whose critiques of liberalism are every bit as devastating as anything Limbaugh et al can conjure up - are whispering in a typhoon of irrationality and bombast. While it may be true as Richard Viguerie and Steven Allen point out in an Examiner op-ed today that conservative intellectuals (”elites” Viguerie calls them) in the past never really enjoyed much cache with movement conservatives, the fact is they were always there to add depth and legitimacy to the national political conversation.

Would that it were so today.

This is the second in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Part I can be found here.

Should conservatives pay any attention to liberals who attempt to critique us?

I actually sympathize with those conservatives who reject out of hand any effort by a liberal to tell us what’s wrong with us. Sympathize - but neither do I brush off such criticism without reading and digesting it for myself.

There are a few liberals who actually make a living looking seriously at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and ideology and, through rigorous examination, while using logically sound arguments, have something important to say that I believe conservatives should take very seriously.

I should note that I don’t necessarily believe it when a liberal says they are offering their critiques because they believe it important that their philosophical opponents get back on their feet intellectually or politically so they can “challenge” liberalism. That’s stretching things a bit, boys. Let’s just leave it at acknowledging a sincere attempt by reasonable people to honestly look at history and conservative philosophy, and, in an academic sense, offer reality based criticism from their point of view.

I am in the process of writing a long, hopefully readable review of Sam Tannenhaus’s Death of Conservatism. I wish I could have done it sooner but I am a slave to time, and such an interesting, thoughtful, although ultimately flawed book deserves a serious effort. Besides, I get to crib from best conservative reviews of the book since I am so late to the party, thus making my job a little easier.

But today’s lesson comes to us via Jacob Weisberg, editor in chief of the Slate Group, former editor of Slate Magazine, and author of the book In Defense of Government. His liberal credentials impeccable, Weisberg wrote a piece a few days ago in Slate that mourned the loss of Neocon Irving Kristol and the fact that the intellectual conservatism he represented died off decades ago:

In the heyday of Kristol’s influence in the 1980s, Republicans styled themselves the party of ideas. Whatever you thought of those ideas—challenging Soviet power, cutting taxes, passing power back to the states, ending affirmative action, cutting off welfare benefits to the undeserving poor—they represented a genuine attempt to remodel government around a coherent vision. Today, as during the pre-conservative stage of Kristol’s career in the 1950s, the Republican Party takes itself much more lightly. It has fallen back upon what Lionel Trilling once called “irritable mental gestures”—crankily rejecting liberal attempts to come to grips with the country’s problems without offering any plausible alternatives. Since the last election, it has been the brain-dead home of tea parties, pro-life amendments, and climate-change denial.

Are tea parties any more “brain dead” than anti-war protests? I had my doubts that any kind of mass protest movement at the grass roots could ever arise among the highly individualistic conservatives. At this point, I have been proved wrong although I am waiting for the inevitable absorption of the tea party movement into the Republican party. All that energy has to be channeled somewhere. And since a 3rd party would be futile, there’s really only one place for the movement to go; a de facto alliance with the GOP in 2010.

Already there are signs that tea partiers are endorsing candidates for office, raising money, and will no doubt supply volunteers to some of these candidates.

I doubt there will be many Democrats on the list of tea party endorsed candidates.

I have written often of what I believe the tea party groups are really all about. It’s not really about taxes, or even gargantuan deficit spending. It is something that few liberals can grasp, although I have seen some analysis on the left come close. The kind of “change” that Obama seeks to bring to America may seem overdue to many on the left but is seen by most conservatives as an attempt to replace an America they know with an another America, one that rejects the values of their ancestors and substitutes what appears to them to be an alien vision of what America should be.

I disagree with conservatives who say the president’s race doesn’t play a role with a small, but significant minority. But those who issue blanket condemnations using that meme are clueless about what is driving this protest; it is the abandonment - or seeming abandonment - of what conservatives see as “First Principles” that includes a basic outline of the Constitution.

It can be argued that fear of change is a fact of life for conservatives but I reject that as a primary motivation because what the president has done is, in fact, revolutionary. Perhaps not to the educated and urbane who believe us far behind the social democracies of Europe in creating a welfare state. But to millions of patriotic, god fearing Americans, they feel they are losing their country and will fight to keep it.

Is this brain dead? No more so than anti-war protestors who believed that Bush was in league with big business to bring perpetual war to our shores. Or that Bush went to war in Iraq to enrich his friends and cronies. Or that the Terrorist Surveillance Program was riotously abused and that the government was spying on Bush opponents wholesale. Excessive ideology leads to excessive paranoia on both right and left. That is the lesson of America in the modern age.

In fact, Weisberg acknowledges this - at least on the right:

How did this prudent outlook devolve into the spectacle of ostensibly intelligent people cheering on Sarah Palin? Through the 1980s, the neoconservatives became more focused on political power and less interested in policy. They developed their own corrupting welfare state, doling out sinecures and patronage subsidized by the Olin, Scaife, and Bradley foundations. Alliances with the religious right skewed their perspective on a range of topics. They went a little crazy hating on liberals.

Over time, the two best qualities of the early neocons—their skepticism about government’s ability to transform societies and their rigorous empiricism—fell by the wayside. In later years, you might say Kristol and the neoconservatives got mugged by ideology. Actually, they were the muggers. “It becomes clear that, in our time, a non-ideological politics cannot survive the relentless onslaught of ideological politics,” Kristol wrote in 1980. “For better or for worse, ideology is now the vital element of organized political action.”

Reformists - and I include intellectual conservatives in that mix - have, as neoconservatives have done, accepted the New Deal and many elements of the Great Society. But their overall critique of both lies not in a rejection of the role the state must play in a modern industrialized society as so many movement conservatives do, but in the belief that value based reforms as well as more efficient allocation of resources can be achieved without destroying the “safety net” while promoting virtues such as self reliance and independence. In short, conservative reformists want to alter the liberal culture in the bureaucracy that seeks to expand their clientele rather than reduce it.

Is this a “liberal lite” approach to government? Is there enough contrast with Democrats to parlay these ideas into a successful political platform? Movement conservatives do not think so. But I believe they are viewing those toward the center through a darkened prism where attempting to address the many serious problems in our country by working with the opposition is tantamount to a betrayal. How can the application of conservative principles to the serious business of government be a betrayal - unless you believe either there are no problems to solve or the solution is to be found in dismantling government hell bent for leather.

I have been asked several times if I understand the 10th amendment or whether I believe in federalism. Sure I do - and a realistic application of the 10th as well as a healthy federalism when it comes to dealing with our nation’s problems can go a long way toward easing the crushing presence of the federal government in our lives.

But you’re kidding yourselves if you believe it will result in lower taxes or even less government. The more responsibility you pile on the states, the higher the taxes go. It would not be logical to expect as the federal tax burden is reduced, the state tax burden wouldn’t increase.

We all believe that there are many programs at the federal level that could easily be transferred to our state legislatures. Just don’t expect taxes to go down because most of those programs have constituencies of ordinary Americans that depend on them. Weaning people “for their own good” from government would be received contemptuously - and well it should be - from those who benefit directly from federal programs some would wish to do away with.

Sorry for the digression but I think part of the problem with movement conservatives and their attitude toward reformists is that they misunderstand motives and intent. The widespread belief that reformists have no principles is laughable - and fighting words if you try and accuse me of such a ridiculous notion. Applying conservative principles to the operation of government is a worthy and - dare I say - principled goal. The confusion comes in identifying “issues” as principles - a trap ideologues fall into regularly. Substituting dogma, which by its nature can be transient responses to momentary openings offered by the opposition, for immutable principles which, by definition, are unchanging, is what ideologues in the movement are all about.

In short, it is not I who lack principles, my ideological friends.

Weisberg correctly, I believe, diagnoses the switch from intellectual principles to ideological dogma and gives us a turning point of sorts while incorrectly observing the reason why a principled conservative could never support Obamacare:

There was no clearer sign of that shift than the effort by Kristol’s son, William, to prevent any health care reform legislation from passing in 1993—on the theory that the political benefit would accrue to the Democrats. Today, that sort of Carthaginian politics has infected the entire congressional wing of the GOP, which equates problem-solving with treasonous collaboration. Though the president has tried to compromise with them in crafting the last missing piece of the social insurance puzzle, even allegedly moderate Republicans are not interested in making legislation more effective, less expensive, or in other ways more conservative. They are interested only in handing Obama a political defeat.

That’s a pretty shallow, partisan analysis of why Obamacare is being opposed. I agree there is that partisan element to the opposition, but it is obvious Mr. Weisberg lives a sheltered life. Otherwise, he would have noticed that health care reform town hall meetings held by Congressmen were just chock full of people who could care less about Obama being defeated, and cared a great deal more about liberals fiddling with the most intimate, and personal part of their lives; their own health.

I have argued that there was much fear mongering on the right (and some on the left as we have seen with Mr. Grayson and several liberal ideologues) that contributed to the anger. But Weisberg is only fooling himself if he didn’t recognize the underlying reason why people who had never taken a stand on anything in their lives showed up at these meetings and howled bloody murder. If it comforts Weisberg and other liberals to believe it was all astroturfed mobs of rabid, enraged, fearful conservatives - fine. Fooling oneself is not a fault confined to the right.

But Weisberg has a point about how political opposition has deteriorated into a mindless nihilism that offers little in the way of alternatives (although the GOP health care reform plan was both substantive and ignored by the media and Democrats) on issues that need to be addressed.

For health care, as long as Democrats insist on offering a “solution” that will ultimately result in a single payer system of insurance and decisions made by government that are better left to a patient and his doctor, conservatives will oppose them with every fiber of their being. We do not see national health care as the “the last missing piece of the social insurance puzzle” but rather as an insidious attempt by government to control the personal lives of citizens - as fundamentally against conservative principles and our concept of individual liberty as anything that has ever been proposed by an American congress.

I agree with much of what Weisberg has written about intellectual conservatives and their failure to either fight the ideologues politically or challenge their dogmatism. Richard Posner saw this months ago:

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

Nor, I trust, will they have one anytime soon.

Iran has graciously consented to obey international law and allow inspectors into their recently revealed nuclear enrichment facility while also agreeing to allow Russia to complete the processing of a large part of their nuclear fuel.

This is an “I told you so” moment for the left…or is it? The Daily Beast:

Who knew this whole “diplomacy” idea might actually accomplish something? Mounting pressure on Iran over its nuclear program appears to be paying dividends as the U.S. engages in multilateral and direct negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva this week. Already Iran has agreed to let U.N. inspectors into its recently revealed uranium enrichment plant and to send most of its uranium to Russia for enrichment, which would help reassure foreign powers that it is not on the path to produce nuclear weapons. The tentative arrangement could be enough to hold off a new round of sanctions on Iran, whose economy is suffering and whose government is still containing fallout from its dispute presidential election. Of course, the deal only works if Iran follows through on its word and some observers aren’t holding their breath. “This is only a start, and we shall need to see progress through some of the practical steps we have discussed today,” European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana told The Washington Post.

This “whole diplomacy thing” has accomplished nothing. Nada. Zipedee Doo Da. Iran had already assured the IAEA that they would allow access to the new site. And as for completing the processing of their LEU in Russia - that too, is not much of a concession. That would be the enriched uranium from the facility at Natanz - a place that the IAEA has been watching very closely so that Iran could never turn that enriched uranium from the 5% level to the bomb grade 90% level.

The fact is, that stockpile was never a problem It was too closely watched for Iran to carry out any funny business. The real problem is that we don’t know what other facilities Iran has built, nor do we know what other steps they have taken to build a bomb that we would never be able to determine. The fact that they were hiding an enrichment facility that was much too small to enrich uranium for commercial purposes, and could easily been used for military purposes, is the real problem with the Iranian nuclear program; it’s what we don’t know and what the Iranians refuse to tell us that makes this situation so dangerous.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk - an arms control advocate - lays out the logic of this argument:

For some time, a few of us - including Josh Pollack and Andreas Persbo - have been arguing (with little success) that the public debate is misguided in its singular focus on breakout scenarios at Natanz. Is Iran 18 months away? How much LEU does it have? These were interesting questions but, to my mind, distractions. Natanz is the most watched site in the world. If the Iranians build a bomb, they will do it someplace else. Like Qom.

Josh Pollack did a wonderful job of tackling these issues in his post, Why Iran’s Clock Keeps Resetting (August 19, 2009) and over at TotalWonkerr, where he noted “One of the shortcomings of breakout lit so far may be its emphasis on on a single site. A hidden site is also a possibility…”

The real risk was always that Iran would construct a covert site other than Natanz. As long as Iran remains under the current safeguards arrangements, I wrote to a colleague this summer, we have “no confidence that Iran is not simply trucking centrifuge components to another location, buried deep under some mountain.”

For example, we would never know (without human intelligence that would have penetrated their nuke program) whether or not the mullahs have been working on a design for a bomb. Computer modeling for such a design is impossible to detect. Nor do we know what progress the Iranians have made in warhead design so that a nuke could be married to one of their improving rockets - the Shahab II and III.

To spout nonsense about diplomacy “working” at this point is truly ignorant. Not even Obama has said anything except that this is a “constructive beginning.” And WaPo’s Glenn Kessler points out that this sudden “cooperation” by the mullahs is not unexpected:

The outcome, which President Obama in Washington called a “constructive beginning,” came after 7 1/2 hours of talks in an 18th-century villa on the outskirts of Geneva that included the highest-level bilateral meeting between the two countries since relations were severed three decades ago after the Iranian revolution. But the difficulties that lie ahead were illustrated when the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, held a triumphant news conference at which he denounced “media terrorism,” insisted that Iran has always fully met its international commitments, and refused even to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.

The sudden show of cooperation by Tehran reduces for now the threat of additional sanctions, which has been made repeatedly by the United States and others over the past week after the revelation of a secret Iranian nuclear facility. The United States will need to keep the pressure on Iran to avoid being dragged into a process without end.

Anyone who followed the EU3 talks that were carried out during the Bush Administration knows full well that the Iranians are experts at dragging negotiating partners “into a process without end.”

Meanwhile, no one can say if at some still undiscovered location in Iran - and indeed the evidence points to this being more than a possibility - centrifuges aren’t whirring away creating HEU that could be used to construct a nuclear weapon. That’s the bottom line and any celebratory nonsense about diplomacy “working” is simple, partisan blather.