Sealed in Ideological Purity

David Frum has had a war of words right wing talk radio host Mark Levin, throughout the year. Recently Levin screamed at a woman caller on his show, that her husband should kill himself for being married to her. Many conservatives, including Frum, thought these radio screamers were hurting, not helping the cause. Levin shot back that his show is popular and that he has a best selling book, hence, he is helping the cause.

In that spirit, Frum promised to read and review Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny. I thought there were some very interesting nuggets in the piece that made me think. (Read the full review here at The New Majority)

Some conservatives say, “No more bailouts.” That’s a fine principle, up to a point. Only – if it had been applied in the fall of 2008, the world economy would very probably have tumbled into a true depression. And it has to be recognized too (as Milton Friedman no less acknowledged in his lifetime) that it is to some degree the existence of those maligned government programs that protects modern America from economic depressions like those of 1929-1941 (or 1919-21, or 1893-96, or 1857, or 1837). The stock market may crash, factories may close – but Social Security checks continue to flow to seniors, doctors collect their fees from Medicare, faculty at state universities earn wages, and depositors at failed banks can still withdraw their funds from cash machines. Conservatives “know” this, but we tend not to emphasize it. Yet it too is part of the story of our times, and as we regroup for the political struggles of the next era, we ought to keep this knowledge somewhere in mind.

None of this interests conservatives very much right now, and it interests Mark Levin not at all. Levin thinks there is nothing to learn from the present crisis, and indeed seems to regard the whole enterprise of learning as ideologically suspect. It’s very striking that nowhere in this book does he ever engage the ideas of intelligent people on the other side. He quotes stupid statements from a fringe group like Earth First! But he flinches from any encounter with any more substantial opponent. He lives in a sealed mental universe, into which nothing new or unsettling can ever penetrate.

It's a wonder to me that there are so many sealed off people who listen to the same talk radio everyday, only read rightist blogs, and read books like Levin's and see and hear nothing else. Even if you agree, isn't that extremely boring? It's the inverted version of a commie country where the people listen to the commissar’s speeches every day, wave red flags and read the little red book.

PJ O'Rourke On Conservative Talk Personalities

Here's an oldie but a goodie from 2004 as conservative PJ laments against people he might even agree with: the Limbaughs, Hannitys and Coulters. I Agree With Me

Coulter begins her book thus:

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.

Now, there's a certain truth in what she says. But it's what's called a "poetic truth." And it's the kind of poetic truth best conveyed late in the evening after six or eight drinks while pounding the bar. I wasn't in a bar. I was in my office. It was the middle of the day. And I was getting a headache.

Read the whole thing.

The argument continues to this day at NRO.

OMG! Fox News Evangelical Cultism!

I don't watch the Glen Beck show, but get a load of what is going on there with this youtube. Who says the right in the US aren't aren't influenced by Evangelical weirdos?

THIS IS NOT SATIRE! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT SATIRE!



This is why, even though I lean right of centre in the political spectrum, cannot go near people like this. I think Rush Limbaugh and his dittohead followers are not far off from this. Essentially, it's a mass of people who want to be preached to, and have something to belong to. Jim Jones knew this impulse.

I'd love to hear what they have to say about this at Small Dead Animals. What's that? crick, crick, crick....

via: David Frum at New Majority

Rush To The Cliff

A cartoon by Chris Britt (click to enlarge)

Radio Carny Barkers

I have posted on Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Civil War many times this week. Here is a very thoughtful piece by John Derbyshire in the The American Conservative on why these talk radio bloviators should be marginalized. (read)

With reasons for gratitude duly noted, are there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

That last paragraph packs a punch. Those people chose sides and defended Bush through thick and thin, ignoring evidence in front of their faces. The majority of the population were seeing things differently. People often don't know what they want, but looking at Bush and guys like Limbaugh, the majority thought, I know what I don't want.

In my own little internet world, conservative websites had/have the same problem. Question nation building in Iraq or Afghanistan? You were a chickenshit, who wanted to "cut and run." Question neo-conservatism? You were a "paleo-conservative." (A term coined meaning dinosaur, old fogey and often used to describe Pat Buchannan.) Question George W. Bush? You had "Bush Derangement Syndrome." It became annoying and divisive.

That's why I started this blog. I couldn't find anywhere else where a conservative type could go to question the orthodoxies. Rightist blogs were fighting leftists so hard they couldn't admit that anything was wrong from their own camp.

Democrats for Rush

The Politico has an article of how some familiar Democratic operatives, like Stanley Greenberg, James Carville and Paul Begala conspired to raise the profile of Rush Limbaugh in the public sphere. To help their cause:

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

(...)

The seeds were planted in October after Democracy Corps, the Democratic polling company run by Carville and Greenberg, included Limbaugh’s name in a survey and found that many Americans just don’t like him.

“His positives for voters under 40 was 11 percent,” Carville recalled with a degree of amazement, alluding to a question about whether voters had a positive or negative view of the talk show host.

These guys, especially Carville, love to pat themselves on the back as master strategists. I wouldn't give them all the credit. However, it makes sense. Rush is their best friend. Blockhead GOP strategists better figure that out.

UPDATE: I wish I could find more conservative sites, besides Frum's New Majority that see this. All I see is the usual defense: "People who criticize Rush never listen to him." It's like the Catholic Church, obey all the rules and don't dare debate what is being fed to you.

UPDATE II: Whoa! This is the headline on Drudge. Now we know it's big news!

UPDATE III: The New York Post are calling it: "Operation Big Mouth" Too funny!

GOP Civil War Part II

subtitle to post: Feeling Better About Being Canadian

Check out this absurd suck up to Rush in the Washington Times by Andrew Breitbart.

Segments:

Spokespeople for CPAC said it was the best-received speech in the conference's 36 years. And that included Ronald Reagan, who, by the way, was no rhetorical slouch.

(...)

Anonymous liberal commentators, the rabid pests of the new media, sought out the most popular conservative blogs to flood the zone with familiar Rush Limbaugh slanders. Their goal: To demoralize the right with layer upon layer of media domination. Only talk radio with its emphasis on Socratic debate over raw emotionalism and with Mr. Limbaugh in the driver's seat has escaped the left's clutches of pure media dominance.

For years, the radio kin of these underhanded online annoyances - coined by Rush as "seminar callers" - have read their Democratic National Committee-produced scripts to muddy the political waters. Talk-show call screeners will be on double duty this week trying to keep off the air anyone who might try to tear down the post-speech unity and elation.

This is serious wacko-ness. Notice the two parts I bolded. They're saying they are the rationalists over raw emotionalism. Next paragraph they say they have to cut off anybody who ruins post speech "unity and elation". Is elation not a raw emotion?

Andrew Breitbart is a big player on the right, especially on the internet. Either he's too dumb, or he expects his audience to be too dumb. Either way, it's not a winning formula.

Why do I care anyway? I'm Canadian. For so many years, the US has lead the way for conservatism. Canada seemed lost. But observing the US over the last half decade, they have dropped the ball on conservatism. They opened up the doors to the kooks and now they run the place. They are a joke. Fiscal prudence and libertarianism are gone. It's now some sort of religious revival type movement where the peasants are dictated at how to think. Breitbart above is saying callers who phone into talk radio who disagree need to be aggressively screened. They don't want to debate. They don't want beliefs challenged. They are sheep.

I don't look up to my big neighbour to the south as much as I used to.

GOP Civil War

David Frum chimes in on Rush Limbaugh's speech:

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise – and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

Ever since Palin popped onto the scene there has been a battle of what the conservative movement means and the character of the GOP. If you read the comments under the article, so many people don't get it. "How dare Frum insults the heroic Rush."

We're going to be seeing the Democrats in power for a long time.

Also: Some fawning on this side of the border for Rush at SDA.

Fidel Castro Rush Limbaugh Speaks

The CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) had their annual convention this weekend. Rush Limbaugh had the keynote speech. He rambles and doesn't offer anything substantive. What fascinates me is the audience, which sound like a paid/threatened audience for a tin-pot dictator. They enthusiastically cheer everything he says. Very strange.

(link to video of his speech)

Quagmire Watch

Originally a NPR reporter, and now a nation builder in Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes gives her assessment of the situation there in this interview for (NPR's) Fresh Air:

Click here to access the half hour broadcast.

She is a well intentioned person and certainly has credibility for being over there in a tough situation. She believes passionately that if only we can pour money in, rebuild and temper the corrupt Karzai government, we can salvage the country. Unfortunately, listening to her makes me think how impossible it is.

Along the way she acknowledges the patience of the Taliban. They tend to withdraw when things get hot, and wait a long time for things to calm down and when people are complacent before striking. She also acknowledges compliance/direction of the Pakistani Intelligence (ISI), and hence military in aiding the Taliban.

Sorry babe, but you didn't sell me on nation building.

NOTE: For radio, you can't beat NPR, even if they are leftist sympathizers. I can see their bias but they do operate subtly, and they have respectful, introspective interviews. So much more appealing than a daily three hour monologue/harangue from Rush Limbaugh, a guy who doesn't even have guests on.