The Sword and the Olive Branch

Read parts one, two, and three

Part four: Purposeful Confusion

Eric Alterman has a bad habit of confusing the meanings of terms which are as plain as day to neutral observers.  It’s a pattern that has sustained his entire career.  In the past he’s bent over backwards to read the worst in Ann Coulter’s glib quips.  It continues in Why We’re Liberals as he professes not to understand what conservatives mean by “liberal elitism.”  Yet nowhere is his seemingly purposeful confusion more apparent than his denial of liberal judicial activism. 

In a short chapter on the subject, Alterman follows what has emerged as a common rhetorical formula for him.  He claims to misunderstand his opponent’s dialectal approach, denies that it can be understood, and then fills the void he created with a meaning that buttresses his argument.  In the case of “judicial activism,” he purports not to understand what it means, and then claims it “has rarely if ever been defined.”  Here Alterman is using an articulate version of the passive-aggressive “I don’t even know what you mean,” in response to slogans one doesn’t like.  It’s safe to presume that Alterman’s misunderstanding is a rhetorical technique, because it isn’t followed up by even a token attempt to grasp the term as it’s used. 

Reading fiction often requires a voluntary suspension of disbelief.  One can’t enjoy a story about dragons, wizards, or totalitarian conservative governments without the ability to ignore the fact these things just don’t exist (which isn’t to say there aren’t corrupt conservative regimes).  We need to use the same technique to follow Alterman’s logic on judicial activism.  After the professor decides that judicial activism is a meaningless term, he defines it in a way that supports his general anti-conservatism, but unfortunately has no bearing on how the term is actually used.  First he cites a study that defines judicial activism as a tendency to strike down legislation as unconstitutional—in other words, for judges doing their job.  The study suggests that conservative judges are the most activistic.

The problem with a lot of serious political science research, partly out of the need to limit difficult variables, is that it tends to saddle complex political terms with simplistic definitions.  Outside of political newbies, no one reduces political conservatism to a mere resistance to change as much as the engineers of political science studies.  Hence the simplistic equation of activism with finding laws unconstitutional.  Even if it wasn’t obvious in the first study Alterman uses, the first clue that something reeks about the whole thing is it’s dubious conclusion.  Because of a sloppy definition of judicial activism, anyone taking the study at face value is led to believe that Clarence Thomas is more than twice as activistic as Stephen Breyer.  The equivalent would be a carefully plotted, five-year long survey undertaken by graduate students which concluded that Rush Limbaugh was twice as liberal as Keith Olbermann.  Should I be more inclined to buy into the “proof” that Rush is actually more liberal, or should I wonder if the grad students are using a definition of liberal no one else uses? 

The second flawed study Alterman cites isn’t truly an alternative to the first.  It just measures judicial activism by a tendency to strike down executive acts instead of legislation.  Predictably, small-government conservatives find more executive acts unconstitutional than statist liberals do.  In both cases, Alterman is conflating activity with activism. 

Alterman’s clever chapter is disturbing because it doesn’t take much effort to understand what conservatives generally mean by “judicial activism.”  Loosely, it means judges interpreting the Constitution in ways that correspond more with prevailing trends than with established principles. This doesn’t mean there isn’t any debate over the meaning of “original intent,” the importance of statutory laws in relation to constitutional law, or whatever keeping with the “spirit of the Constitution” entails.  Conservative opponents of judicial activism are chiefly concerned with keeping judges from arbitrarily imposing their views on others.  Even conservative novices know this—which means that Alterman, too smart and intellectually curious to simply overlook something central to his argument, has purposefully went out of his way to avoid understanding what he’s talking about.  At least here, the author is demonstrably more ideological than intellectual. 

Conclusion

So what general impressions does one come away with after reading Why We’re Liberals?” 

Firstly, liberals are capable of self-criticism.  It may come sandwiched in between layers of anti-conservative vitriol, but it’s there.  Alterman is no shill for communism.  His take on affirmative action is to approach it through class instead of race, which is at least one step up from the lowest rung of identity politics.  Alterman is individualistic enough that I imagine that I could have a good faith dialogue with him; he doesn’t share President Obama’s habit of talking past conservatives, recycling academic talking points as if he’s still on the campaign trail. 

Secondly, even the most educated liberals are dismissive and uncurious about conservative ideas. This happens because the left’s problem isn’t the absence of a moral code or education; it generally has plenty of both.  No, what the left needs more than anything is humility.  Liberals look down on those who aren’t liberal.  Blanket claims that liberals are smarter, kinder, and more sacrificial than conservatives are not uncommon even among the most cultivated progressive minds.  This arrogance has kept them from learning any lessons from the conservative movement. 

This won’t change anytime soon.  Until a dominant segment of America comes to understand that political alignment doesn’t dictate character, liberals and conservatives will jockey for moral superiority.  In the meantime, conservatives should remind the left that being liberal doesn’t mean you’re smarter, more caring, more tolerant or less capable of pettiness and crime than anyone else.  It just makes you liberal, that’s all.  Until this sinks in, Americans will keep using liberalism as a status symbol, something to signify that they’re well-educated, thoughtful citizens (think PBS license plate frames). 

This is one of the most important fronts in the culture war.  Not until the veneer is stripped off of liberalism and all of its subsets will American politics even have a chance to become an intellectual endeavor, as opposed to a vehicle people use to feel good about themselves. 

Finally, liberals are insecure about their beliefs.  Alterman’s worst moments don’t come when he strays to the far left, but when he’s inappropriately lashing out against the right.  When he carelessly tosses around accusations of bigotry, it betrays an insecurity which belies his aptitude and relative affluence.  Liberals wouldn’t feel such a strong urge to lie or call their opponents hate mongers if they were truly convinced they had the intellectual high ground.  Confident people argue with ideas; insecure people embellish anecdotes.  This suggests that liberals can be persuaded if they would actually listen to conservative arguments.  Thus, the most difficult left-wingers to talk to aren’t necessarily the furthest to the left, but the most defensive and uncommunicative.

So in the face of liberal intellectualism, don’t be intimidated.  Eric Alterman is one of the most intelligent liberal authors I’ve read, and his philosophical soft spots aren’t much different than Sean Penn’s.  If you find yourself debating a liberal egghead, don’t feel as if you need to be clever or conniving.  Just make your case as if you were sharing ideas with anyone else.  Obviously there will be a lot of disagreement, but you’ll be surprised at the things smart liberals concede.  Open up to them, empathize with them, and if they get too full of themselves, give them a good rhetorical smacking. 

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Follow the links to parts one and two

Part three: Elitism

Some of the most important battles in politics are waged over the meanings of words.  Responding to the rhetorical question “Why are liberals so damn elitist?” Eric Alterman writes that it’s difficult to know exactly what conservatives mean when they say “elitism.”  He then proceeds to describe exactly what conservatives mean by noting “the crime is apparently one of the mind,” and that the right judges elitism “on the basis of attitude, rather than income.”  Curiously, Alterman claims conservatives shout “elitism” to beat back liberals instead of arguing with them.  He thinks it’s used to preempt and dismiss liberal perspectives.  This is actually a mirror image of Ann Coulter’s premise that liberals use “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobic,” “xenophobic,” and “stupid” to avoid arguing ideas with right-wingers.  Like many of Alterman’s arguments, this one is intuitively wrong, but needs explaining to refute. 

Elitism is indeed an attitudinal trait.  While Alterman disagrees with this, he also perfectly understands that this is how conservatives have used it.  He’s being sarcastic in the following example, but I couldn’t describe elitism better than he did: “It’s not about where you live, how much money you have, how many security guards you regularly employ, where you summer, what you drive, what you drive when you’re driving whatever else you drive when you’re not driving that, where you went to school, or where you think people should have gone to school.”  Exactly, Professor Alterman.

Elitism isn’t necessarily about class; it’s about looking down on others.  Certainly there are wealthy elitists, but not all wealthy people are elitist.  Elitism is not contingent on class, education, or any other demographic category.  Bill Gates owns multiple cars, likely employs his own security guards, summers wherever he wants, and doesn’t have to work another minute of his life if he doesn’t want to, but nothing I know about him suggests that he’s elitist.  Yet even the poorest, white-trash leftist who looks down on Christian conservatives for not being sufficiently critical of their personal faith is displaying an elitist attitude. 

So if elitism is a shallow tendency to look down of groups of people for having demographic characteristics one doesn’t admire, then it follows that liberal elitism is the presumption that liberals are superior to conservatives solely based on political alignment.  While anyone who identifies themselves as liberal or conservative will naturally hold their ideals in higher esteem than others, what would make ideological particularism elitist is an arrogant, personal tone.  Ironically enough, Eric Alterman provides more than a few examples of liberal elitism. 

My first exhibit of Alterman’s snobbishness is his common claim that conservatives frame issues in simple “black and white” dichotomies, while liberals perceive “shades of grey.”  His strongest evidence is a study which suggests that liberals are more willing to accept new ideas, but that could signify a lack of conviction as much as it implies a capacity for nuance.  Either way, these contentions are demonstrably false.  No matter how morally ambivalent liberalism may or may not be, conservatism cannot be reduced to simplistic, reactionary protest.  

The American right has always been a predominantly literary movement, rooted and nurtured by words and ideas.  Conservatism would be unrecognizable without its literary column.  If American fascists had censored the publication of Whittaker Chamber’s Witness or Frederic Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, anti-communism may never have never caught on and induced the birth of American conservatism.  Take away Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and what we now call conservatism might have a different name.  If the National Review had never been published, conservative ideas probably would not have been able to spread the way they did in the latter half of the 20^th century.  Moving away from literature, right-wing audiences dominate talk radio, and I won’t be the first to tell you that there are far more entertaining choices of media than explicitly issue-driven commentary.  It takes more than watching syndicated episodes of The West Wing to understand conservatism. 

I don’t doubt the intelligence of liberals, but on the surface, conservative perspectives on several issues are clearly more nuanced than liberal ones.  For example, conservatives tend to believe that tax cuts across the board help stimulate the economy by allowing businesses to keep more capital to invest in more opportunities, often resulting in the hiring of new employees.  Contrast this counter-intuitive concept with the anti-intellectual left-wing mantra “tax cuts for the rich,” which insultingly implies that the rich are the only people conservatives intend to benefit with tax cuts.

Immigration is another issue which liberals frame in “black and white” terms while conservatives wrestle with its moral ambiguity.  Conservatives recognize that illegal immigration is a cultural and economic issue whose ethnic implications are incidental.  If white people with a general tendency to resist assimilation started illegally residing in America, immigration would still be a serious issue to conservatives.  A sure way to undermine American culture would be to introduce a large population of immigrants who are ignorant of, and even hostile to it.  Contrast this argument against illegal immigration with liberal protests, where poster-board advertises inanities such as “no human being is illegal;” as if that breaks the conversation wide open. 

The ideas that conservatives see things in simplistic terms is in part an unfortunate by-product of the fact that liberals tend to be self-styled moral relativists, while conservatives believe in a transcendent moral authority.  Classical conservative dogma states that matters of right and wrong lie on a plane untouched by humanity’s ability to recognize evil.  This is not the extreme moralizing position one might expect.  Even liberals generally agree that crimes such as pederasty are wrong no matter what reasons are invented to excuse them-yet this argument depends on the existence of absolute morality, even if it’s narrowly defined.  Even if one doesn’t agree with my reasoning, it’s obvious that even the most maligned conservative doctrine, absolute morality, is cerebral, and not a dippy general attachment to authority.   

Just as irritatingly condescending is Alterman’s corresponding claim that liberalism is more demanding than conservatism, which if true, would mean liberals are more self-sacrificial.  While it’s undeniable that leftists spend more time picketing and protesting than rightists, is that really a sacrifice?  The unmatched standard for mass protest happened at Woodstock, and it’s difficult to argue that attending a self-congratulatory, drug-fueled concert for days on end is more of a sacrifice than a lively vacation.  Even today’s protests are social events that aren’t exactly inhospitable to its participants.  If marching against the Iraq war was truly a sacrifice, it would have been rare, and not a predictable phenomena on college campuses and outside big party conventions the past seven years.  At its root, activism is simply the combination of belligerence and direction.  It’s not necessarily something to frown upon, but getting yourself arrested for sitting on the white house lawn isn’t nearly as sacrificial as opposing a left-wing monster, communism, by standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square.

This begs the question: what exactly is it about liberalism that makes it more demanding?  No one in America is punished by the government for simply being a left-wing activist.  I could stand on a soap box all day and shout anti-conservative speeches through a megaphone and the most I’ll be accused of is disturbing the peace.  Perhaps being on constant vigil for political transgressions, i.e., always being “conscious,” can take a psychological toll on someone, but conservatives have a much clearer case that their political doctrine is more demanding.  

The absolute moral authority so important to conservative thought is just that: absolute.  It makes claims on us whether we like it or not.  For example, in the conservative mind, there are no good reasons to cheat on a spouse.  The fact that not all rightists live up to their professed ideals only speaks to how difficult they can be to uphold.  The liberal theory of moral relativism necessarily dictates that cheating is o.k. in certain circumstances.  Considering mankind’s ability to justify even the worst crimes (Al-Qaeda released videotapes with measured, if ultimately wrong reasons for attacking the United States on 9-11), that’s not anywhere near the vicinity of sacrificial.  Making excuses for stealing (my family needed the food) cheating (my wife ignores me) and lying (Republicans did it first!) is always easier than not doing those things in the first place. 

Perhaps the most glaring example of liberal elitism comes before the table of contents in Why We’re Liberals.  One of the opening quotes in it is from John Stuart Mill, “…stupid people are generally conservative.  I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”  For Christ’s sake.  Everything I’ve written up to this paragraph is unnecessary.  Mill’s arrogant proclamation describes everything conservatives mean by liberal elitism. 

Next week: conclusion-purposeful confusion  

Cross-posted at Modern Conservative

Tags: Elitism, Eric Alterman, why we're liberals
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Part one can be found here.

Part two: Obligatory Identity Politics

Why we’re liberals begins with a predictable but thoughtful (at least in this case) premise that liberalism has been maligned by conservatives and the mainstream media (Alterman’s breakthrough hit, What liberal media?, makes a comprehensive argument that the mainstream media is conservative).  It’s followed by a short account of recent trends in liberal history.  He focuses on reasons liberalism isn’t as popular as it was in the early 20th century, including the prevalence of welfare payments “that appeared to reward sloth,” the “permissive social morality” advocated by the left, “the use of courts, rather than the electoral process, to achieve liberal aims,” and many more.  While no serious person could mistake Alterman for anything but a leftist, his description of liberalism’s fall from grace is critical and informative. 

Alterman then paints an impressive portrait of what a liberal society looks like by describing the most progressive aspects of Europe: free health care and the European Union’s abolition of the death penalty come to mind.  He claims that health care costs Europe less than half of what it costs America, and that Europe’s infant mortality rate is lower than the United States’.  He advertises Europe’s recognition of gay marriage and mandatory paid vacation for all workers.  Yet he doesn’t mention how dominantly liberal the political atmospheres of American hellholes such as Detroit (consistently recognized as the most liberal city in America, according to voting patterns), and Oakland are.  He only mentions Europe’s problems with unemployment (fueled in no small part by the expensive mandates the EU imposes on businesses) and immigration as an aside.  No group in America intimidates its citizens like politicized Muslims bully Europeans.  Groups of unassimilated immigrants don’t light up America’s streets like a Christmas tree.  These same people will remain unassimilated because the only alternatives to cowardly, balkanizing multiculturalism Europeans seem to conjure up have more than a whiff of racism. 

All the Europhilia in the world couldn’t derail Alterman’s defense of American liberalism.  But his unabashed declaration of Europe’s cultural superiority does foreshadow his most problematic arguments, the reasons he believes that America doesn’t embrace the left today.  When attempting to describe America’s reluctance to become liberal, Alterman cycles through the usual excuses: He argues that liberals by their very nature don’t get as angry as conservatives do, so they’re not as forceful.  He argues (falsely) that the conservative base is much wealthier.  He claims that liberals are handicapped by their dedication to good government.  He peevishly complains about the Electoral College, and so on and so forth.  In contrast with the book’s promising opening, Alterman serves the reader, among other gruel, boiler-plate proclamations of moral superiority more appropriate for the street-fighting blogosphere than a serious ongoing debate. 

Perhaps the most inappropriate section in Why We’re Liberals blames liberalism’s unpopularity on conservative’s “purposeful exploitation of racial fear and loathing.”  While this is disappointing to read from the pen of an intellectual, it’s not a surprise.  No sympathetic summary of left-wing viewpoints would be complete without irresponsible accusations of America’s most taboo crimes: racism, sexism, and “homophobia.”  Earlier in his book, Alterman accuses Glenn Beck of “racist rants” without attribution.  He accuses the New York Daily News of “homophobia,” for describing former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in feminine terms, such as calling his voice “fruity.”  Even the word “hatred” is loosely wielded by Alterman, as calling Cindy Sheehan a “crackpot” is apparently an example of it.  

His loose definition of fear mongering includes a deeply flawed analysis of a 2006 political ad the RNC ran against the African-American Harold Ford during a Tennessee Senatorial race. The ad begins with a young white woman proclaiming “I met Harold at a Playboy Party!”  To support the contention that the ad was racist, Alterman cites a writer who doesn’t understand the simple southern term “he ain’t right,” and instead makes a logical leap and concludes that it really means “he’s just not white.”  This is the same logic Alterman himself employs when he claims that attacks on the New York Times have an undercurrent of anti-Semitism because supposedly average Americans associate New York with Judaism. 

This all leads up to Alterman’s most inflammatory claim, that “blacks are demonized by conservatives so they might more effectively exploit the fears of white Americans.”  Really?  It’s the left, not the right, which insists on framing the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad as a racial appeal, not an argument about the dangers of letting prisoners loose on weekend furlongs.  It’s Democrats, not Republicans, who in practice preserve racial resentment by refusing to reject the anti-intellectual tendency to attribute racially ambiguous phenomena, such as opposition to Barack Obama, to racism.  Aside from sex crimes, racism may be America’s most stigmatizing offense, so charges as serious as racism must be backed up by something more substantial than subjective rhetoric.  Otherwise we risk unfairly branding people to the point no American wants to hear what they actually have to say.  But I suspect Alterman already knows that. 

Our ancestor’s past racial crimes cast such a long shadow over America today that I fear that my discussion about Alterman’s book has been drowned out.  But precisely because racism is so inescapable, any discussion of America’s dominant political schools cannot help but to broach it.  There’s a reason Americans are still arguing over two decade-old advertisements.  So I will end this section with a few important words on race, while acknowledging that truly addressing the topic would take much more than a personal essay.

Anyone who comprehends the American right knows that racism is incompatible with conservative doctrine.  Conservatism insists that people be judged by their actions, which obviously cannot include their ethnic makeup.  Race does not dictate character.  This isn’t to say there aren’t any self-identified conservatives who are racist, but their racism is a deviation from conservative ideology, not a natural manifestation of it.  Additionally, none of the right’s most influential figures, including Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, and G.W. Bush are bigots, nor do they promote bigotry.  The closest any of them come is Ann Coulter’s stupid use of the term “raghead,” to taunt Muslim terrorists. 

Again, a lot more needs to be said, but it would engulf my original message.  The point is that Mr. Alterman’s accusations of bigotry are clearly polemical, intended to vilify, not inform.  Remember that this is Professor Eric Alterman, a well educated, level-headed representative for the entire American left, not some glazed-eyed neophyte, intoxicated by the opportunity to feel important through politics.  His rhetorical excess just proves that intellect alone does not prevent even the smartest people from overstating their opponent’s crimes. 

Next week:  Elitism

Cross-posted at Modern Conservative

Part 1   Part 2    Part 3   Part 4

Tags: alterman, racism, why we're liberals
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