Right Wing Nut House

When Barack Obama became president, he promised to try and change the relationship dynamic between Islam and the west. His goal was to build bridges, lessen hostility, create trust, and generally lower the decibel level of conversation between the two cultures.

There can be little argument regarding the president’s goals. The great struggle in which we are engaged against Islamism can only be won if we bring the hundreds of millions of peaceful Muslims who only want to be left alone to practice their faith and live their lives by their own lights to our side. Muslim distrust of America - a distrust that predated by many years the administration of George Bush - is an impediment to making progress against those who think no more of beheading a Christian as they would stepping on an ant on an anthill.

So let us grant the president his good intentions. That doesn’t excuse his shocking myopia, his crippling naivete, or his ludicrous, almost childish trust in the intentions of characters like Ahmadinejad, Abbas, or even his old friend, the Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi. At some level, the president either believes in the infallibility of his own judgment or in the power of his sincerity overcoming the fanaticism of our enemies.

It doesn’t really matter because his approach has been proved wrong by events. The Iranians are still building the bomb while laughing in the president’s face; Abbas is playing him for a fool, using the president to pressure the Israelis into concessions - only to renege and get the US to go back and pressure the Israelis some more; and if anything, all the president’s efforts to show tolerance and forbearance toward Muslims hasn’t budged the needle of hostility directed against the United States and our policies, although Obama himself is more popular personally among Muslims than his country.

Where the president’s outreach policy has met with success is here at home. One in five Americans now believe he is a Muslim, compared to about 12% two years ago. This is a fantastic achievement to nearly double the number of Americans who aren’t sure if the idiotic stories they hear about Obama being a closet Muslim are true or not. And to think Obama wasn’t even trying. Just imagine what he could do if he really put his mind to it.

In truth, there are two forces at work that have conspired to advance this fantastical notion that Obama is a Muslim. The first has to do with the tight negative feedback loop that passes for the dissemination of information among many conservatives.

Call it ‘epistemic closure’ or an echo chamber, the result is that when you get all your information filtered through the same sources - sources that are constrained from questioning the efficacy of the dominant narrative being pushed due to fear of being cast out of the circle - an alternate reality is created where Obama’s Muslim religion, his disloyalty to the United States, even the notion that he is a communist lovechild are accepted as fact or seen as being possible.

These ridiculous facts are fed indirectly by the demonization of the president via mainstream talk radio and the conservative press. “If he’s capable of ‘X’, then it is certainly possible he can be ‘y’” is what passes for reason and logic among the faithful. If Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the economy in order to enslave Americans and make them wholly dependent on the federal government for survival, as Rush Limbaugh has suggested, why is it impossible that he’s a Koran loving Muslim to boot?

The second force at work is related to the first but lies in the perception - even among independents - that the president does not share their values. This is wholly the president’s fault as his fine, moderate rhetoric has given way to radicalism in fomenting an agenda that, by his own admission, seeks to alter the American experiment. In short, there is a disconnect between Obama’s personae as a “moderate” and his actions as a far left liberal.

Despite the belief by the president and his left wing allies that the American people are stupid louts who need to be led to water by the snout, the people’s unease with the president has little to do with what religion he follows, or the color of his skin, and more to do with the idea that Obama’s basic beliefs are at odds with a majority of his fellow citizen’s.

He says he believes in self-reliance, but his actions belie that notion. He says he believes in the grand tradition of American liberty, and yet supports measures that reduce it. He says he believes that America is an exceptional country while letting the world know that we are no different than any other nation. Do we detect a pattern here? There is a titanic disconnect between the president’s rhetoric and his actions. This not only breeds a basic mistrust that is showing up in opinion polls, but also feeds the unreasonable paranoia of those with less charitable attitudes toward Obama.

When nearly a third of conservatives buy into this “Obama is a Moooslim” narrative, my fellow righties should stop wondering why I refer to these specimens as “knuckledraggers” and “loons.” About the same percentage also think that Obama has issues with being constitutionally eligible for office - another jaw dropping notion that proves the existence of a mindless echo chamber on the right that subsumes objective reality in favor of an over-the-rainbow worldview. Fear and loathing are powerful emotions, and as the Obama administration stumbles and bumbles its way forward, the liklihood is that at least among the rabid conservative base (as well as other wayward intellects who are incapable of thinking for themselves), horns and a tail will continue to grow on the president and the perception that he is alien in some way will continue to resonate.

I suppose it was inevitable that the litmus test conservatives would begin purging those who don’t measure up to their very narrow, very limiting agenda. But it’s still something of a surprise to see World Net Daily - the rabid right wing online publication that has become famous for promoting the birther issue - canceling an appearance by the Queen of the Conservative Punditocracy Ann Coulter for what WND refers to as a “homoconflict.”

Conservative superstar Ann Coulter today was dropped as a keynote speaker for WND’s “Taking America Back National Conference” next month because of her plan to address an event titled “HOMOCON” sponsored by the homosexual Republican group GOProud that promotes same-sex marriage and military service for open homosexuals.

Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, said the decision was a gut-wrenching one for his team because of their fondness for Coulter as both a person and writer-speaker.

“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” said Farah. “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”

Can’t have any of that “materialistic libertarianism” - perhaps better described as “tolerance for other people and other points of view” - gumming up the works of the conservative media juggernaut. I happened to stop by the GOProud booth at CPAC a couple of years ago and discovered that these guys are - with the exceptions mentioned above by Farah - about as mainstream conservative as you can get.

From their website:

GOProud represents gay conservatives and their allies. GOProud is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy. GOProud promotes our traditional conservative agenda by influencing politics and policy at the federal level.

In fact, if Farah knew anything of the history of conservatism, he would recognize that GOProud’s “traditional conservative agenda” used to define conservatism. It is only recently that bigots like Farah have added gay marriage and - omigod - “sodomy as an alternative lifestyle” to the ever growing number of no-nos the culturecons have foisted on the conservative movement.

Coulter seems a little bemused by the insult. She’s just interested in the cash:

Farah then asked: “Do you not understand you are legitimizing a group that is fighting for same-sex marriage and open homosexuality in the military – not to mention the idea that sodomy is just an alternate lifestyle?”

Coulter responded: “That’s silly, I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly don’t endorse their views. I’ve spoken to Democratic groups and liberal Republican groups that loooove abortion. The main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al-Qaida conference. I’m sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences. But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people I’m speaking to. I was going to speak for you guys, I think you’re nuts on the birther thing (though I like you otherwise!).”

Coulter’s own intolerance has been well documented. But at least she has a notion of what conservatism is all about.

I have stopped referring to people like Farah as conservatives for the simple reason their views are not reflective of any conservative philosophy of which I am familiar. Radicalism is the antithesis of conservatism as anyone who has ever read Edmund Burke’s wrenching critique of the French Revolution can attest. Their idea of “limited government” is radically limited. Their notion of “free markets” is an economic Darwinian nightmare. And their agitation to bomb just about anyone who threatens US interests reveals an imprudence that is most unconservative.

What has driven me and other conservatives to try and marginalize people like Farah is their radicalism may not be the mainstream of conservatism, but it influences the Republican party and the conservative movement much to their detriment. They are not “fringe” actors by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are they close to a majority. They are loud, and they vote, and that makes them important to politicians.

Rejecting those who agree with your agenda 90% of the time is stupid politics. Hence, despite GOProud’s embrace of traditional conservative issues, their sin of supporting gay marriage and the elimination of “Don’t ask don’t tell” in the military trumps their support for conservative economic and foreign policy issues.

Indeed, the Executive Director of GOProud Jimmy LaSalvia gave a very reasonable, conservative answer to why they support gay marriage:

As long as the government is in the marriage business it should treat gay couples as equal to their straight counter-parts. Accordingly, we are pleased with the outcome of the Prop 8 case.

A no brainer, really - which describes Mr. Farah to a “T.”

Radical right wingers like Farah are in the business of reducing the size of the Republican party until it is a distillation of pure right wing wackery. These folks are beyond “epistemic closure” and are in a full blown epistemological meltdown. The don’t create a reality as much as it oozes up from the muck and detritus of their broken and wildly inconsistent worldview - the result of unreasoning hatred for those who are in any way “different” and an illogical ideology that cannot brook any opposition lest it collapse in a disordered heap.

And Ann Coulter isn’t conservative enough for these guys? Something wrong with that picture.

Last weekend when President Obama played good cop/bad cop in trying to articulate his position on the Ground Zero mosque, one was left with the distinct impression that the president didn’t know quite where he stood on the issue.

After a fine, brave defense of Muslims to build there, the president “clarified” his position a few hours later by basically saying “no they don’t.” Obama realized too late he had touched the newest third rail in American politics and gotten electrocuted for his troubles.

What the president apparently didn’t realize is that any defense of the mosque was tantamount to supporting the idea of it being built at Ground Zero. Later, as he tried to cleave his statement on constitutional rights by attempting to separate the abstract notion of rights from the real world idea that Muslims were attempting to construct an icon to their religion at the site of the worst terrorist attack in American history - carried out by Muslims - Obama came off wishy washy. The perception by both mosque proponents and opponents was that he took sides in the controversy and then tried to weasel out of his position.

But Obama and the Democrats aren’t the only ones who have discovered that touching the Islam issue can be hazardous to one’s political health. While 70% of Americans oppose building the mosque at Ground Zero, most of those Americans agree with the president that Muslims have the same rights as any other religion to practice their faith whenever and wherever they see fit. The GOP tried gamely to separate their opposition to the mosque from the crazies in their base who are rightly perceived as bigots in their view of Muslims - all Muslims - as “the enemy” in the War on Terror. Protestations to the contrary, the notion that “the only good Muslim, is a dead Muslim” is not unknown among the knuckledraggers.

In truth, much of the GOP base is not in favor of killing all Muslims. They just want to deny them equal standing in American society with Christianity. There are probably less than 3 million Muslims in America and yet, every accommodation by schools, cities, towns, and municipalities to Muslim traditions and religious practices brings forth the most wildly hysterical accusations of the “dhimmification” of America. A proposed foot bath at the University of Michigan brought an over the top response from noted self promoting, anti-Muslim blogger Debbie Schlussel. The idea of making the Eid a school holiday in New York brought this blogger to a state of near apoplexy.

The idea that so few Muslims could force the rest of us to accept Sharia law or forcibly convert us is, of course, idiotic. So there have also been proposals to limit or eliminate immigration from Muslims countries, which gives some in the base a twofer; anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry to boot.

This is part of the baggage being carried by Republican critics of the mosque who must avoid any appearance of intolerance lest they be tied to the rabid bigotry of the base. Yes, there is rabid bigotry and it is more widespread than most on the right would care to admit. All one need do is visit the comment section of any medium sized or large blog and scan responses to posts about the mosque. Islam is a “cult,” or “evil.” To many, there is no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim. If they are not outwardly supportive of the terrorists, they harbor a secret desire to enslave us. There is no accommodation with Islam, only conflict.

If you know a little history about Catholics in America, you will recognize that they were saying much the same thing 160 years ago with the first great influx of Irish immigrants. The myth that America is tolerant of other religions is belied by the historical treatment of Catholics and Jews in this country. While lip service is paid to constitutional protections, as late as 50 years ago, there were serious conversations carried out by serious people about whether electing a Catholic president would doom us to rule from Rome.

With one side getting scorched for agreeing with Muslims about building a mosque at Ground Zero, and the other being skewered for perceived intolerance, one can begin to see why most smart politicians kept their mouths shut about the mosque. There was real danger of making a misstep and falling off a cliff into controversy - something devoutly to be avoided 70 days before the election.

One can argue that opposing the mosque being built at Ground Zero is hardly tantamount to expressing bigotry toward Muslims, but the perception can successfully be shaped by the opposition that lumps opponents in with the crazies. If you’re in a close race with many persuadable voters, the last thing you want is to be tarred as a bigot. Similarly, you can parse your words and speak in glowing abstracts about the constitution and freedom of religion while having your words twisted into support for Islam’s “triumph” over the infidel. There really isn’t any upside to taking a public position on whether to build the mosque.

This won’t be the last controversy about Muslims in America, which sets up an interesting dynamic. As these political fights become more and more toxic, it is likely that most politicians will become more reluctant to take a stand. When coming down on one side or the other loses you votes, you tend to split the difference.

Better to be called wishy washy than a Muslim lover or a bigot.

I don’t agree with it. I think it myopic in that it ignores Imam Rauf’s questionable associations and even more questionable statements. And the idea that the mosque is being built to foster dialogue and understanding is only believed by liberals and little children.

But it took the courage of one’s convictions to take such a hugely unpopular stance, putting the constitutional argument fairly well while reminding us the cost of following that document sometimes.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who have led our response to that attack – from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us always remember who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for. Our enemies respect no freedom of religion. Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam – it is a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders – these are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children. In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion – and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

“The writ of the Founders must endure” is an excellent statement. I only wish the president could see his way clear to honoring that statement in other areas of the constitution.

In the abstract, I don’t think al-Qaeda supporting Muslims would receive quite the support from the left if they were the ones trying to build a mosque overlooking Ground Zero. But the more I read about this fellow Rauf makes me ask my liberal friends if they know who they are getting in bed with when they so viciously attack those who are opposed to building the mosque. I don’t trust people who say one thing in one language, and another thing in another language as Imam Rauf has done repeatedly. He has also been silent in the face of extraordinary statements by his colleagues in Malaysia about suicide bombings, Hamas, and hatred of the US. He has blamed the US for 9/11, defended Palestinian terrorism, refused to disavow Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel, and attended at least one conference with known terrorist sympathizers.

This guy is about as moderate a Muslim as Rush Limbaugh is a moderate conservative.

Regardless, I like our presidents to stand up for what they believe even when it isn’t popular. That’s why I despised Clinton so and cut George W a little slack. It is such a rare commodity these days in America - this kind of Profile in Courage - that it should be acknowledged and praised when it shows up.

Obama will be hammered for it - also part of American politics. Some of it will be sincere, some of the criticism will be calculated to draw political blood. Any way you look at it, Obama surely knew what to expect which makes his statement all the more praiseworthy.

I can’t recommend this Jeff Goldberg article in The Atlantic highly enough. After several years of interviews with leaders and policy makers from Israel, Iran, America, and other Arab countries, as well as talks with military experts, Goldberg comes to this reluctant conclusion:

I have asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear program in the near future? Not everyone would answer this question, but a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July. (Of course, it is in the Israeli interest to let it be known that the country is considering military action, if for no other reason than to concentrate the attention of the Obama administration. But I tested the consensus by speaking to multiple sources both in and out of government, and of different political parties. Citing the extraordinary sensitivity of the subject, most spoke only reluctantly, and on condition of anonymity. They were not part of some public-relations campaign.) The reasoning offered by Israeli decision makers was uncomplicated: Iran is, at most, one to three years away from having a breakout nuclear capability (often understood to be the capacity to assemble more than one missile-ready nuclear device within about three months of deciding to do so). The Iranian regime, by its own statements and actions, has made itself Israel’s most zealous foe; and the most crucial component of Israeli national-security doctrine, a tenet that dates back to the 1960s, when Israel developed its own nuclear capability as a response to the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, is that no regional adversary should be allowed to achieve nuclear parity with the reborn and still-besieged Jewish state.

Goldberg brilliantly lays out most of the dire consequences of such a strike:

When the Israelis begin to bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, the formerly secret enrichment site at Qom, the nuclear-research center at Esfahan, and possibly even the Bushehr reactor, along with the other main sites of the Iranian nuclear program, a short while after they depart en masse from their bases across Israel-regardless of whether they succeed in destroying Iran’s centrifuges and warhead and missile plants, or whether they fail miserably to even make a dent in Iran’s nuclear program-they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

Goldberg notes that with success, the Israelis will buy time (probably putting the Iranian program back 3-5 years), earn the secret thanks of most of the moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East, and will have stopped potential proliferation to terrorist groups in its tracks.

Is that worth initiating a strike that could lead to World War III?

What will the Russians do if the Israeli’s hit Bushehr? It is likely they will kill Russian technicians in such a strike since they are building the facility under contract with Tehran. Will Vladmir Putin take the death of Russian scientists and technicians lying down? What if he retaliates against Israel? What would be the American response to that?

August, 1914?

Unleashing Hezb’allah against the western world, stirring up trouble in Iraq by ordering the Shia militias into the streets, not to mention a missile campaign against Israel that could kill thousands (at which point Israel may decide that to save its people, it must expand its own bombing campaign, escalating the conflict to the next level) - this alone could ratchet up tensions causing the world to start choosing up sides.

And no America with the will or the self-confidence to step in and assist the world in standing down.

Obama’s foreign policy is not anti-American, unpatriotic, or designed to favor Muslims. It’s just weak. The president has made the conscious decision that the US is too powerful and needs to defer to supra-national organizations like the UN, or regional line ups like NATO or the Arab League when conflict is threatened. “First among equals” is not rhetoric to Obama. He means it. He has been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that most of the world’s troubles have been caused by a too-powerful United States and hence, only deliberately eschewing the promotion of American interests can redress this sin.

This will be the first world crisis since the end of World War II where American power and prestige will not be used to intervene in order to prevent catastrophe. Obama is betting the farm that his worldview will be more conducive to defusing a crisis than the more realpolitik and pragmatic point of view that has dominated American foreign policy for 65 years.

We are shortly going to find out whether good intentions really matter in international affairs.

This blog post originally appeared on The American Thinker.
UPDATE

I’ve received  a few emails from some of my more liberal friends informing me that I misunderstand Obama’s world view and that the president’s foreign policy is as good for US interests as any other presidents

I would say that Steve Hynd captures the president’s foreign policy views accurately:

Way back in 2005, a young Adam Weinstein wrote a paper on Just War Theory that’s well worth a read, but from which two key phrases jump out at me - “the bleak fact that justice is what states make of it.” and “expanding the ‘we’”. I’d characterise those two phrases as encapsulating what I call the “Crooked Cop” problem: America needs to become the world’s “good” cop instead of a “bad” (i.e. short-termist, self-interested) cop.

Only the bad guys object to an honest, impartial and hard-working policeman for whom “protect and serve” is more than just a slogan. A good cop is an asset to his community and puts everyone else’s interests before his own, which ends up serving his own interests - respect, affection, and a mostly peaceable community to live in. But no-one likes a cop who has his own interests at heart first and foremost - who’s usually looking for a “take”, is never there when you need him and applies the law only when it suits him while looking the other way when his pals commit crimes. A bad cop should get out of the law enforcement business because he only makes his neighborhood worse.

What pisses me off about the hawks of both left and right is that their policy prescriptions too often begin as their own short-termist conception of American national interest informed by hearty helpings of militarism and American exceptionalism which are then overlain with a thin veneer of pablum about humanitarian considerations, freedom, democracy and “we’re the world’s policeman” BS to sugar-coat their origins with something more palatable to US voters. No-one in the rest of the world buys it for a second.

My own longer term conception of US national interest is that it would, indeed, be better off as a truly impartial, self-sacrificing but respected cop rather than one pretending to do the job while feathering its own nest. Acting as an honest broker pays much bigger dividends than couching self-interest in hyperbole about freedom and democracy. Like a huge number of non-Americans, I’ve no objection to America being the world’s policeman if America will be an honest cop, a “protect and serve” cop. No-one else is big enough for the job at present (although in future the US and others should look to reform the UN for the job). But better no cop at all than a cop on the take. To be a good cop, America must realize that its national interest lies exactly in not aggressively pursuing its national interest.

“America must realize that its national interest lies exactly in not aggressively pursuing its national interest….” perfectly captures the confusion, the stupidity, the utter nonsensical treacle that passes for deep thought about foreign affairs on the left.  What makes Obama extraordinarily dangerous is that he actually believes this looniness and is trying it out on the international stage. What has been the response from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, and other problem states? Barely concealed laughter (in the case of Iran and Syria, not even concealed).

I prefer hard headedness - on both sides. Real American interest lies in promoting democracy in a non-lethal manner - efforts that will, as it did in Eastern Europe - bear fruit over decades. Those who believe they can change the world in 4 or 8 years should be prevented from having anything to do with foreign policy.

In the meantime, yes we do have short term interests and we serve those at the expense of the interest of Iran, Russia, Syria, and other bad actors because not doing so harms the US. It is laughable, extraordinarily naive to pretend that long term interests of the US are served by eschewing our own interests and placing other nation’s interests ahead of ours. No one would be stupid enough to run a campaign based on that notion because, quite rightly, the American people don’t want to vote for someone who will subsume American interests to the interests of other nations. That’s utter nonsense. It depends on the supposed good will of other nations to recognize the US sacrifice and reward us with cooperation. It also presupposes a measure of rationality from our enemies that many of them have yet to demonstrate.

Mr. Hynd may not like “strategic ambiguity” and other repugnant gambits and he is right that in this case, it  won’t work. In order for strategic ambiguity to be effective - as it was when Clinton and Bush were president - there must be the tiniest sliver of doubt among our adversaries that we may end up attacking after all. When Obama says “all options are on the table” with regards to Iran, no one believes him in the slightest. In order to bomb Iran, Obama would have to abandon his entire world view. It won’t happen, everyone is aware of it, and Iran is acting accordingly.

The bullies, the psychopaths, and the despots sleep better at night with Obama as president as they never have previously. That’s the reality we live in - the result of Obama putting his worldview into practice. I’ve written previously that the hard left has been waiting 40 years to prove to the rest of us that their way in foreign policy is safer, and better for America. Now that they have someone in the White House putting their ideas into practice, let us hope that they were right and that such a Pollyannish outlook toward our potential enemies does not blow up the world in their faces.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice.

Who owns the “conservative conscience?” Is it necessary to have one?

After all, there is no identifiable “liberal conscience” - at least no one who comes readily to mind. There’s plenty of criticism of Obama from the left but weirdly, the president is being taken to task for not being “liberal enough.”

This presents a delicious dichotomy; conservatives taking other conservatives to task for being too conservative (or not conservative at all) while liberals are taking other liberals to task for not acting liberal enough and being too centrist.

Flip the philosophical identifications and you have a mirror image of the way internal critical debates were conducted during the Bush era. It seems that ideologues belonging to the party in power are never satisfied that the leadership is “pure” enough while those on the “outs” are advised by apostates to be constrained in their criticism so as not to terrify the great middle of American politics.

How many times have we seen over the past decade “a liberal who gets it” or “a conservative who gets it” appear on opposing websites, describing a critic who skewers his own? Apparently, those who criticize their friends using some of the same arguments as the opposition achieve the status on the opposing side of being “the conscience” of one ideology or another (while being described as a traitor by their putative friends) - until they revert to form and criticize the opposition. Then, they are no longer the “conscience” of anything but rather a member of the echo chamber that parrots the talking points of the day for either side.

If I sound a little bemused by it all, I beg forgiveness. Having been accused of criticizing some conservatives in order to garner adoration and praise from liberals, I have experienced this process first hand. But it raises the interesting question; what kind of criticism makes one a “conscience of conservatives?” (I invite someone from the left to ask that same question and respond to it. I have no expertise - or desire - to take on the question myself.)

Perhaps a better question would be is a conscience for conservatives even necessary?

In the last fortnight, we have seen several respected conservatives wonder about the craziness of some in the movement and the general abandonment of reason and logic that has resulted in conspiracy theories, exaggerated and over the top criticism of the president and the Democrats, and an incoherent rage that suffuses the movement with a patina of paranoia that scares these observers about the direction the right is taking.

These critiques were roundly rejected by most conservatives. What is it, then, that these conservatives find wrong with the right?

I don’t think I am overgeneralizing when I say that the primary criticism of the right offered by most conservatives today is that those in positions of power are simply not conservative enough, that they are not true to conservative principles (as they understand them), and that such squishiness makes them “Democrat lite” - a pale echo of the other party.

Since this appears to be the dominant criticism of the right from the majority of conservatives, are those who can best elucidate that theme acting as a “conscience,” illuminating what needs to be changed for conservatism to stay on the straight and narrow and succeed as a viable alternative to liberalism? Or is the meme just another part of the “epistemic closure” described by Julian Sanchez and others?

The idea that just because a majority of conservatives believe its leadership (and those who don’t agree with their worldview) are squishes does not necessarily disqualify them from winning the title of “conservative conscience.” They have a point - of sorts. One of the problems of conservatism is that we continue to elect those who swear allegiance to conservative values and philosophy while running for office, but then discard, or even apologize for the label when they get to Washington.

But the tendency to lump everyone who fails to toe the very strict, very narrow line that most of these critics require of their leaders is very much reflective of the kind of epistemic closure described by other conservative critics. And the further tendency to dismiss those critics who show how this narrow-minded obstinacy creates impossible performance standards that are in danger of condemning politicians to the political fringes only reinforces the notion of conservatism being an echo chamber that admits no deviation from scripture.

My guess would be that the majority of conservatives who adhere to this worldview would be dismissive of the very idea of a “conservative conscience.” To their way of thinking, it smacks of more elitism and top-down management of the movement, not to mention that they are the targets of this criticism. No one likes being told they are the problem, or an obstacle to fixing what ails a system.

In this case, the pushback against those who rail against the illogical and unreasonable criticisms of the Obama administration and the Democrats - that they are “socialists” who are hell bent on “destroying America” - is often incoherent and irrelevant, based as it is on the notion that the critic is only trying to curry favor with the liberal media, or seeking to gain status in the elitist conservative hierarchy, or even that the critic is angling for a job in the MSM. This too, represents a kind of closure, as Sanchez pointed out:

To prevent breach, the internal dissident needs to be resituated in the enemy camp. The Cocktail Party move serves this function particularly well because it simultaneously plays on the specific kind of cultural ressentiment that so much conservative rhetoric now seems designed to stoke. Because it’s usually not just a tedious charge of simple venality—of literally “selling out” to fetch better-paying speaking gigs or book deals. You can clearly make a damn good living as a staunch conservative, after all, and Bruce Bartlett doesn’t exactly talk as though he’s gotten a big income boost out of his apostasy.

No, the insinuation is always that they’re angling for respectability, because even “one of us” might be tempted by the cultural power of the enemy elites, might ultimately value their approval more than that of the conservative base. It’s a much deeper sort of purported betrayal, because it’s a choice that would implicitly validate the status claims of the despised elite. You’re supposed to feel as though you’ve been snubbed socially—discarded for “better” company—which evokes both more indignant rejection of the quisling and further resentment of the liberal snobs who are visiting this indignity on you. In a way it’s quite elegant, and you can see why it’s become as popular as it has.

Sanchez believes that rejection of legitimate criticisms offered by “dissidents” is also a sign of insecurity on the part of the movement. He thinks it self defeating “because it corrodes the kind of serious discussion and reexamination of conservative principles and policies that might help produce a more self-assured movement.”

Would a “self-assured” conservative movement recognize or accept “dissident” critiques of conservatism as legitimate and thus grant them the status of being a “conscience of the right?” That will never happen. Sanchez dances around the idea that this is as much a cultural battle within the conservative ranks as a conflict being driven by ideology or policy differences. The movement likes to portray the differences as a fight between “ordinary” Americans and those who went to the best schools, had the advantage of class, or, as Stacy McCain has pointed out, are looking for career advancement by trying to separate themselves from the “rabble.”

In fact, the support for Sarah Palin, whose very ordinariness is what recommends her to many on the right, is a living example of how closure has warped the conservative movement and turned it into something not recognizable as a philosophy embraced by Reagan, Buckley, Kirk, and other more practical, less ideological adherents. The thinking goes that the smart folks have blown it and now its time to give an ordinary American a chance. The fact that this reasoning is thought sound by so many is indicative of why “dissidents” will never be taken seriously by those who most desperately need to be reintroduced to logic and common sense.

Having the left, or the media, identify anyone as a “conscience of conservatives” is meaningless. The source of that label is instantly disqualifying among the majority on the right. Who, then, will take it upon themselves to bring a measure of responsible opposition and a coherent set of principles under which the right can govern to the majority?

In order to offer a solution, you have to see a problem first. Since the Becks, the Limbaugh’s, the Hannity’s, the Coulter’s, and other cotton candy conservatives have no intention of risking their own status as movement icons in order to bring a measure of sanity to their acolytes, it seems probable that the simple answer to that question is nobody.

My latest is up at Pajamas Media and I take a look at the new approach to governing offered by New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels.

A sample:

In looks, demeanor, temperament, and life experience, Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels are as dissimilar as the states from which they hail. The former is a blunt, outspoken, even pugnacious former U.S. attorney with a career in New Jersey noted for reforming a local political cesspool and prosecuting white-collar crime. The latter is a soft-spoken, balding, lifelong Hoosier political junkie who spent a decade as a top executive of a Fortune 500 company.

Despite their seeming opposite natures, the two governors share a common denominator that may hold the key to fostering a new kind of Republican Party where principle and pragmatism combined with confidence and competence offer the voter a real choice in governance.

Neither man can be considered an ideologue. Nor do the two governors pander to any faction in the party or outside of it. Instead, both seem to have hit upon formulas for success that are peculiar to their own state — and their personalities.

Polls show a majority of Republicans dissatisfied with their choices for president so far. Can you blame them? The candidates who are making noises like candidates are, for the most part, retreads from 2008. At at time when fresh ideas and fresh faces are desperately needed, the GOP is falling back on its old “next in line” scenario for a presidential candidate with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee each trying to claim that mantle and Sarah Palin trying to pretend that she’s an outsider of some sort.

The future of the party is in the statehouses across the country where Republicans like Daniels, Christie, Huntsman, and perhaps even Rick Perry are showing creativity, courage, and hard headed realism in confronting the problems of governance in these tough economic times. This, more than adherence to ideology, or being a slave to partisanship is what is desperately needed in Washington if we are to save the American model of capitalism from the levelers and anti-business zealots in the Democratic party.

In baseball, there are times when no matter how good a hitter is, a pitcher paints the corner with three straight unhittable curve balls for strikes. It is at that point that the hitter tips his cap to the pitcher and walks dejectedly back to the dugout, secure in the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to beat the pitcher at that at bat.

I am in a similar mindset when reading Ezra Klein and Matthew Ygelsias this morning. The have taken spectacularly bad jobs numbers and put such a sweet spin on them that there really is nothing to do but tip your hat to the way they have made sweet potato pie out of horse manure.

Klein:

Another 143,000 census positions expired, contributing to a total public sector job loss of more than 200,000 jobs. But the private sector continued to recover, adding 71,000 jobs — its best performance since April, and its third-best number this year.

[...]

So you can look at the bottom line one of two ways: Either we lost 131,000 jobs, or if you ignore the census jobs, we gained about 10,000. The good news? The 71,000 jobs we did gain came from the right place, and the jobs we lost are job losses we can prevent if Congress finds the will and the votes.

You can also look at it as 71,000 jobs representing about half the total number of jobs that need to be created every single month just to keep pace with new people entering the work force in the private sector. The idea that the private sector is “recovering” is pure spin. If business is only creating half the jobs necessary to take up the slack in new hires, how in God’s name is it going to replace the 8 million jobs lost in this recession? The numbers show we are falling behind, that the recovery is worse than anemic, and that the policies of this president and his party are directly responsible for it.

Last year at this time - 8 months after Obama took office - discouraged workers who stopped looking for work stood at 368,000. Today, that number has climbed to 1.2 million. This did not happen on George Bush’s watch. It is a direct result of the Democrats taking their eye off the ball and pushing national health insurance at the expense of dealing with the jobs situation. While Democrats were arguing with themselves whether or not a public option was needed and how much they should screw over insurance companies, big pharma, and big medicine, the jobs picture went from bad, to worse, to catastrophic.

It was obvious by last summer that the stimulus bill - sold by the president as something that had to be passed immediately and without due consideration because it would help create jobs in the near future - was oversold and a gigantic waste of money at a time the Democratic congress was smashing every deficit record in history. Instead of dropping the health insurance chimera and turning their attention to Americans who were desperate for work, the Democrats pursued the illusion of national health insurance reform, thus condemning this nation to what the Administration is calling “Recovery Summer” - perhaps the most inapt characterization of economic conditions since Roosevelt made “Happy Days are Here Again” his party’s anthem when unemployment was at 25%.

And the idea that the $26 billion passed by the senate and awaiting action in the Democratic House will make things all better in the public sector is either ignorance on Klein’s part or disingenuousness. The 143,000 census jobs are not coming back no matter how many tens of billions you throw into the laps of Democratic interest groups.

As for the teachers, the question arises how long Uncle Sam is going to keep bailing out his nephews? It’s the same question asked of those who have already gotten 100 weeks or more of unemployment payments. There are people out there who are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, despite being eligible for the extended unemployment benefits. They don’t want to do it. They find no pleasure in it. They would probably be incensed that I am using them as examples. The point is that there are alternatives out there besides Congress, in essence, giving some people an excuse not to take what job or jobs they can.

If Klein was brilliant in spinning the numbers, Yglesias throws up a strawman that would make Ray Bolger proud:

The losses came from the public sector. And they were foreseeable. And they were foreseen by the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and the majority of House members and a majority of Senators. And the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and the majority of House members and a majority of Senators voted for bills that would have prevented that. But because in the Senate a minority of members can get their way, action wasn’t taken. Consequently, we have a horrible jobs number. Which would be bad enough, but the way the American political system works, the minority party that prevented the majority from addressing the crisis will accrue massive political benefits as a result of the collapse.

Conservatives won’t admit it today, but what we’re looking at is a major breakdown of the logic of the American political system.

Of course they were foreseeable. Nearly 75% of the public sector job losses resulted from the end of the census taking process. Those jobs were not permanent, were not meant to be permanent, and were always going to end. To make the unbelievable claim that it is the GOP’s fault that the public sector lost 53,000 permanent jobs - many of which the result of state budget cuts outside of the education sector - is illogical.

Maybe Yglesias should start by repairing that “breakdown in logic” in his own head.

Both these prominent ex-members of Journolist appear not to have missed a beat in shilling for the White House.

UPDATE

Jesus Lord how did I miss this eye-popper from Benen:

For quite a while, Democrats have said the government needed to intervene to prevent the job losses we’re seeing now. Republicans refused. To be sure, the job market would need to be stronger in either case, but the GOP is entirely responsible for holding the job market’s head below water — and yet, they’re also the ones gloating. It’s maddening.

Um…no. “For quite a while” the Democrats have been saying that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8% and that a million green jobs would be created, and that we had to save the jobs of state workers (and we have to do it again and probably again after that), and that unemployment benefits were good for the economy, and any month now, the Democrat’s policies would bear fruit and we’ll all live happily ever after.

And does Bennen realize people are laughing at him when he blames Republicans for this? With a spread of 59-41 in the senate and a 40 seat majority in the House, the problem is not GOP obstructionism but the rank incompetence of Democratic leaders who not only can’t convince one lousy RINO to jump to their side on anything, but can’t even keep their own caucus together. Reagan regularly convinced several dozen Democrats to vote for his policies. All Harry Reid has to do is to keep his hands from jumping ship and convince Olympia Snowe that the New York Times will give her favorable mention if she votes his way.

All last year we heard the same refrain from the Democrats; you have to give the stimulus time to work and then…you’ll see. Things will be right as rain. This despite the fact, as I mention above, Obama looked the American people in the eye and said the crisis was so dire that members of Congress shouldn’t have to read the bill, just vote yes on it so that jobs can be created immediately.

Now that the stim bill has proved to be a spectacular failure, the Democrats have switched their talking points, pretending they knew all along that the stim bill wasn’t enough and we need to spend more, and more again to get the economy rolling. Reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s description of a test pilot going down in The Right Stuff: “I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C! Tell me what else I can try!”

Try the truth. That would be novel.

I like optimists. Their sunny dispositions and can-do attitude work like a tonic on old curmudgeons like me who always seem to find that the glass is half empty.

Ordinarily, we want optimists in government. Not only does it make the behemoth more pleasant to deal with but optimistic people also tend to be more competent than sourpusses.

That said, there is a huge difference between optimism and bat guano crazy, pie in the sky fantasy. Case in point - the Medicare and Social Security Trustees who issued a report on the fiscal health of those funds that was so fantastically optimistic, one wonders if they made their observations from the vantage point of an alternate universe.

An eye-opening editorial from Investors Business Daily:

ObamaCare extends Medicare’s trust fund by 12 years to 2029, administration officials said Thursday in the annual report on Social Security and Medicare, ignoring that the extra savings and taxes are already earmarked for the new health law’s major expansion of insurance coverage.Those savings assume much slower growth in health care costs to an extent that Medicare’s chief actuary says may be unlikely. Meanwhile, Social Security’s cash-flow woes worsened and its disability trust fund will run dry by 2018.

“The report seems rosier, but really what has happened is a shift of resources away from Medicare toward Medicaid and the new health care subsidies,” said Bob Bixby, executive director of the fiscal watchdog Concord Coalition.

Still, the report does hold out the longer-term hope that ObamaCare might slow runaway health spending - if all of its provisions are enacted and work exactly as planned.

That is an assumption which carries “great uncertainty,” cautioned chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster in an accompanying report.

Foster characterized the report as “an illustration of the very favorable financial outcomes” possible if higher medical productivity gains are achieved in the long run.

“Actual future costs for Medicare are likely to exceed those shown by the current-law projections,” he wrote.

The trustees - all Obama administration officials - also noted that the cost projections factored in a 30% cut in fees paid to Medicare physicians, something the administration intends to avert.

So lets get this straight. This rosey report is based on the idea that health care costs will rise slower than in the past - despite the fact this has never happened, budget cuts no one intends to make, and the perfect implementation of the extraordinarily flawed and imprudent Obamacare.

Got ya.

Liberals are already crowing about these overcooked, overripe numbers. Former WaPo blogger Dan Froomkin, writing at HuffPo, can hardly contain his glee:

The new health care law has significantly improved the prognosis for Medicare, extending the life of its trust fund by 12 years until 2029, and thereby delaying any need for dramatic changes in benefits or revenues, according to a new report.

The annual check-up from government actuaries overseeing the nation’s two central safety-net programs also found that Social Security continues to be much less of a problem than Medicare, and will remain in strong financial shape at least through 2037.

As I wrote above, I like optimists. Froomkin would have been great as a passenger on the Titanic. (”Just a scratch, folks. All is well.”) Note also that Dan fails to include the titanic caveats in the report, like Obamacare working to perfection and non-existent, never to be seen payment cuts to doctors becoming a reality.

Well, not on this planet anyway.

I think these Medicare trustees are in the wrong business. They should be weather forecasters. Never a cloudy day will be predicted if they take over the Weather Channel.

This blog post originally appeared on the American Thinker.

This is the first in a series of posts that will examine issues and themes that will not be discussed in the upcoming election.

At a time when America is questioning itself more than at any point that I can recall in my life, it occurs to me that the real issues that should be debated are not even being raised by candidates. Immigration, the deficit, Obama’s “socialism,” health care, and the class warfare being waged by both sides are so much chum to be churned by liberal and conservative ideologues until the frothy, bilious, smelly mess that is our politics today overflows with hatred and hysterical denunciations.

It is ridiculous to say one side is more at fault than the other, or that one side is worse than the other, or that one side started it. In the end, who cares? The result is a fantastically dangerous game played by the powerful who take advantage of the ennui engendered by this tiresome, depressing state of affairs to impose their idea of control on American citizens.

We have made trade-offs over the past half century, giving up some individual liberty for the good of the whole. In many cases, this has resulted in a fairer, more decent, more equal America. Some conservatives may disagree but in reality, this is close to the 18th century vision of the Founders. While recognizing the enormous power of government to do harm, they also recognized that government had a role to play in protecting minorities.

At that time, minorities were political, not racial or gender, or sexually oriented. Nevertheless, the concept that, if left unchecked, some Americans would deny the minority among them fundamental rights was well understood by the Founders and they created a government that would be strong enough to protect those rights.

But somewhere along the way, we’ve gone off the rails. The power of government is being used not so much to guarantee rights as it is to effect control. Choices are limited, property expropriated, the will of one faction imposed on another - all this and more resulting in a significant loss of personal liberty; not in the name of “fairness” or “equality,” but simply because power elites have the ability to manipulate government to serve their own selfish ends. Corporations, Big Labor, organized pressure groups, - all claiming their machinations are for “the good of the people” or are necessary for a strong economy, or will save us from global warming/obesity/cancer/iron poor blood and any other societal ill that acts as a beard for someone’s idea of doing what is best for the rest of us.

We know this. We sense this is true. But we pretend we are powerless to stop it. It is this cynicism that is being used to destroy the foundations of personal liberty and turn the people into virtual serfs.

More importantly, the vision, the tradition, and the fundamental guiding principles of the republic have been subsumed by the desire of public and private  elites to milk the treasury or put the fix in on the system to advance their own personal or collective agendas, all the better to improve their own station in society at our expense.

It begs the question; are we still a nation where the consent of the governed is required for government to act? Have we ever been? It’s a trick question, in part because it is generally understood that citizens “give their consent” by voting for our representatives from the state house to the White House.  In this respect, we have a “representative democracy” based on the trust we place in our leaders to generally act in our interests when voting on legislation affecting the national or local interest.

But there is nothing in the Constitution that states the government needs our “consent” for anything. Indeed, the phrase itself is found in the Declaration of Independence - a glorious expression of American ideals without any force of law whatsoever. It is in our traditions as a republic and a foundational principle that the ideals that animated the revolution be carried over and incorporated into the governance of the country. But as far as a Constitutional construct, “consent of the governed” doesn’t exist.

Instead, we grant our consent to be governed not as a result of law, but of an implied “social contract” between the people and the government.  There is a grand philosophical tradition regarding this social contract in western political thought. Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and Oakshott, among others, believed that the legitimacy of government depended on keeping its end of the bargain. This could variously be defined as the notion that the people surrender some or all of their “sovereignty” in exchange for the rule of law which, ideally, will generate social order.

Implied in the American social contract is the concept of natural rights superseding, or being equal to civil rights. Again, the reliance on natural rights to help define our social contract is part of the Declaration of Independence, and only inferred in the Constitution. But tradition and the clear thinking by the Framers of the Constitution on the question of natural rights gives them a force beyond law.

So what does all this theorizing have to do with the practical political matter of citizens regaining control of their own government? The social contract is clearly inoperative. When the law is manipulated by those with the wealth and connections to twist its meanings so that it benefits only them, or a small number of elites, there is no “consent of the governed” as originally understood, nor can such be extrapolated in any way from the current state of affairs. If we understand the “rule of law” to mean equality under the law as well as the more translucent concept of equal justice under the law, those who join with political leaders to, for example, fix it so that they can loot the treasury if their financial skullduggery blows up in their faces, are complicit in an open violation of the social contract.

That which is not vouchsafed all should be allowed for none. Perhaps that’s a place to start when it comes to redefining our broken contract with the government. I frankly don’t know. I don’t pretend to have answers, only the desire to initiate debate. Whether that’s enough to save us all - right, left, liberal, conservative, moderate, or libertarian - from losing something very rare and precious and yes, exceptional, I don’t know.

Next: The Middle Class has been Disappeared

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice