Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
-
A lovely quote
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Libertarianism has also been defined with some plausibility as the form taken by liberalism as common sense asymptotically approaches zero. -- Richard Carnes, via L.W.M.
Occasionally, when under assault by right-wing no-nothings as a lefty-liberal I'm tempted to try to explain just how it is that democratic instincts are not incompatible with the state as a political balancing force against the defects of capitalism, but sadly, in the hailstorm of invective, explanations are usually beside the point.
The baggage we carry as advocates is always the result of some half-assed implementation of perfectly reasonable analysis and criticism -- ask Adam Smith, or Karl Marx, take your pick -- but in the end, as advocates we do have to answer for the failures of our ideological predilections in the real world.
Ideally, this should drive us to adapting the good in them to compromise and practical use, but sadly, it rarely does. As a liberal social democrat, and something of a pragmatist, I don't really want to fight with either genuine conservatives or libertarians, but if I'm continually offered a battlefield rather than a forum, and a party catechism rather than a legislature, what am I supposed to do?
-
Serendipity
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That last should have been know-nothing, rather than no-nothing, (There's those pesky homophones again) but I kinda like it the way it turned out. The nyet faction -- omnipresent and indefatigable. It fits, somehow.
-
Paul R channels Borat
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your cultural learnings of America are often instructive, but rarely as funny as this was. I can just see you in an ill-fitting suit and wire-rimmed glasses, nodding and scratching your head as an earnest young Republican in a boater with a red-white-and-blue band explains it all to you.
-
Truths, mostly inconvenient
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the things I've admired about Paul Rosenberg's comments here from the very beginning, apart from their clarity and erudition, is that he's almost alone in understanding precisely how liberals and conservatives differ in the context of American public policy, and is intellectually fearless in turning over the rocks which conceal the antidemocratic origins of much of the conservative view of government.
His grasp of what's been at issue the Fairness Doctrine -- the difference between its purpose as described by conservatives, and its real purpose -- is only the latest example.
Although I'm happy to leave a description of the details up to Paul's knowledge of political history, which is extensive, and his analytical skills, which are impressive, I'd like to make a few more general observations of my own.
1) It's always been clear to me that conservative attacks on tax policy can be reduced to attacks on the progressive part of it, and that the reason why is that conservatives absolutely do not want the government to serve as an agent of income redistribution.
2) Conservatives have attempted to destroy any government agency which acts to constrain the freedom of action of the wealthy. They absolutely do not want meat inspected, environmental laws enacted and enforced, the education of the poor subsidized by tax revenues (it tends to create meritocratic competition for their heirs), class-action suits, or legal assistance provided to the indigent at government expense, especially in civil suits.
3) Conservatives have also attempted to destroy any non-governmental center of influence which might inconvenience the wealthy. They cannot abide labor unions, trial lawyers' associations, university professors, or independent scientists. (I once heard a billionaire Texas oil entrepreneur, asked in an interview whether he regretted his lack of formal education, reply as follows: Wha hell no, if ah wont a PhD, ah'll jest hahr one. If they work for him, in other words, he can keep an eye on them. If they work for Harvard, they're a threat.)
4) Not content with creating a propaganda simulacrum which provides an alternate reality for the disaffected, and using it to capture the institutions of government which at the end of the New Deal had at least the hope of fostering the conditions for a true democracy in our industrial society, they now want to surround the proceeds of their theft with the fence of legislation, and preserve it against the possible loss of an election or two here and there. (This is real reason why the Fairness Doctrine disappeared.)
5) The bottom line: the wealthy believe that their wealth entitles them to run all our insitutions without interference from the messy folks who have different values and no money. They aboslutely do not understand why they should allow the poor to use their money, stolen from them by the tax code, to compete with them for influence in determining the future of the country. They do not view society as a collective enterprise which should be run by democratic rules, nor will they ever concede that they gain as much from a liberal social contract, or the labors of the poor, as they contribute.
That's why it's been necessary to turn liberal into a curseword, and to call anyone who crosses them a looney leftist, pinko or socialist. As Paul said yesterday, making and selling pornography is good, looking at it is bad. That's the American conservative creed in a nutshell.
-
Well said again, Paul
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Postmodernism is at its best best when it looks for patterns in cognition, and assembles them in a context which allows hitherto hidden sources of human motivation, and human action to be perceived. It's at its worst when we use it to replace the thing with its signifiers, and declare them to be functionally equivalent.
I'm reminded of an old Zen parable I read somewhere, probably in one of Alan Watts' books:
When I began to study Zen, the trees were trees, and the mountains, mountains.
When I'd studied Zen for a while, the trees and the mountains were no longer trees and mountains.
Now that I've finished my study of Zen, the trees are trees once again, and the mountains, mountains.