Conservatism

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America needs to get back to religion, no matter what libertarians say

Here’s a quick lesson for young, self-styled libertarians: Nick Gillespie’s punk-rock stylings and irreverent attitude are not a formula for success.

Admittedly, few in the budding millennial libertarian “generation” will believe me. They are busy celebrating pot freedom and the right to marry whoever they want. Clearly, somewhere along the line between Leonard Read and the New York Times-dubbed “libertarian moment,” freedom turned into blissful sodomy and getting stoned. Should the trend continue, libertarianism will wither, and rightly so.

Gillespie, who is a thought leader in the trendy libertine-leaning freedom movement, is championing the decline. From his soapbox at Reason magazine, he preaches the principles of free association and non-aggression. Much of his work is laudable; his wittiness is a great tool showing how foolish the warmongers in Congress are. But even the wisest jokester is not immune to stupidity. Gillespie’s attitude, anti-authoritarian as it is, is a road map of the perilous direction that libertarianism is trending.

In a recent diatribe, the black jacketed sermonizer attempts to correct Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on a topic of high importance: God and America. The governor, who is a convert to Catholicism, recently told a group of Christians and Jewish leaders the country has drifted away from God. This path is dangerous for America, he averred. As a possible 2016 presidential candidate looking to court social conservatives, Jindal was unambiguous about his warning, telling the crowd, “We have tried everything and now it is time to turn back to God.”

This is all wrong according to Gillespie. Issues of public policy, spending and debt, entitlement programs, civil liberties, and militarization are not matters of spiritual conviction. When it comes to politics, he maintains, “God has nothing to do with any of that.”

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How sad it must be to be angry all the time

Well I didn’t call it.

The perpetually indignated lefties at Slate have declared 2014 “The Year of Outrage.” They aren’t wrong; and it’s more than a bit ironic the writers making the claim are also responsible for the madness that now defines the internet news cycle. A handful of the site’s reporters weighed in on the outrage phenomenon, some admirably taking responsibility for it. Jordan Weissmann, to his credit, lamented the “impulse to jump on the outrage cycle” and drive traffic to small pieces of life’s innumerable injustices. He defends the practice however, saying “viral hits help finance other less outraged, more important journalism.” Yes and drug-dealing can also be used to fund soup kitchen operations. The latter doesn’t make the former any less immoral.

Betsy Woodruff does a decent job highlighting the more embarrassing attempts to use outrage machinations by conservatives. But even while well-meaning voices on the right are apt to use harsh-worded demonization, the kind of determined vitriol progressives embrace is another matter altogether. For the left, outrage is a lifestyle instead of a seldom-felt emotion.

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It’s not worth abolishing the Senate for direct democracy

There is a reason why many notable conservative thinkers hold the concept of ideology in low regard. Often times, ideologues, so married to their ideas of right and wrong, make grand propositions to showcase their intellectual superiority and flair for dramatics. The ideologue’s job is rarely the search for truth but instead to turn philosophy into a dazzling light show.

At least that’s my take on a recent screed in the Jacobin titled simply “Abolish the Senate.” Given that the piece appears in one of the most radical leftist periodicals in America, I expected hyperbole. But the article, written by journalist Daniel Lazare, surprises in its lack of thoughtfulness and overuse of dog whistles meant to inspire base anger in progressive readers.

So what exactly is wrong with abolishing the Senate, an institution 225 years of age? As a Nockian, I’m inclined to endorse the sentiment. Representative democracy on a large scale is hogwash and deserves a good axing. Unfortunately, history warns against such radicalism, and shows us that revolutionary calls to action are often sown with the seeds of complete societal upheaval. That’s not exactly my cup of tea. Hence I’m not so keen on pushing the proverbial button and abolishing the much-maligned state in one fell swoop, including the Senate. Perhaps one day we’ll get there, though it’s doubtful.

Back to the piece, Lazare is adamant about tossing out what Washington called the saucer that cools the populist longings of the House of Representatives. His reasoning is simple: the current United States Senate is “one of the world’s most undemocratic legislatures.” How so? The men and women who make up the legislative body are disproportionately representative of the country. The millions who live in New York City essentially have the same amount of votes as the half-million hicks that reside in Wyoming. And that just ain’t fair.

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An airing of grievances

Here’s my first post for Front Porch Republic. Happy Festivus!

As I’m sitting in an office on K Street, emptied for Christmas, wondering how to introduce myself to you all, it occurs to me that I owe you an explanation. It sounds like a bad joke, that a editor at a DC political website would want anything to do with a website dedicated to place and peace.

There was a big story out last week, by James Carden and Jacob Heilbrunn about my city paper, and how its editorial page is America’s biggest “megaphone for unrepentant warrior intellectuals.” That’s got something to do with it.

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Leave the 24 hour Christmas music cycle alone

The season of joy is here. And while many of the same troubles that have beleaguered mankind since antiquity (wars, famine, suffering) are still afflicting much of the globe, Christmas continues unabated. Department stores are decked out in green and red. Multi-colored lights decorate houses in middle class neighborhoods. Makeshift Christmas tree shops have sprung up in vacant parking lots. Children are excitedly begging their parents for the latest and greatest gizmo. Brightness is all around.

In present-day America, the Christmas season is known for another tradition: 24-hour holiday music playing on local radio stations. Like many staples of life, the continual playing of festive tunes is met with a fair amount of derision. There are a few reasons for this. The digital revolution is slowly making FM radio obsolete. These days almost everyone opts for their own music rather than the pre-set choices on corporate airwaves. Not only that, but growing secularism and rampant consumerism have eaten away at the real meaning of Christmas. Luke 2:8-14 seems quaint compared to the new Xbox, or whatever video game system is poisoning young minds these days.

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Coming of age with The American Conservative

I must begin by thanking Jordan Bloom for the invitation to become a contributor to The Mitrailleuse. Some readers may know me from my intermittent blogging from about 2009 to 2011 for The American Conservative. Others might even know me for my frequent appearances in roughly the same period at Mondoweiss. And perhaps a few might know me for my first book that was released in 2011, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism. In April, the book I’ve been at work on ever since will be released, The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History.

Introducing myself effectively is in many ways exceptionally timely this month with the demise of The New Republic. As an intellectually curious young person who came of age at virtually the very moment of the September 11 attacks, I learned to have a particular hatred for The New Republic at the tail end of its recently much-ballyhooed heyday. I’m mature enough now to have an appreciation for those who are lamenting the apparent demise of the public intellectual and their forum in political magazines as a matter of principle. But in all candor I remain blind to the greatness and romance surrounding TNR, and in particular Leon Wieseltier’s back-of-the-book.

And the reason for this, frankly, is because my adolescent romance for the life of the mind – from politics to literature to ideas – was with The American Conservative. I still remember well when I was 17, first seeing and reading the first issue in the magazine section of Borders at White Flint Mall; two institutions now joined in meeting their reward by TNR, which memorably blasted the premier of TAC as “Buchanan’s surefire flop” (only in the recent coverage did I realize that this was a tasteless reference to The Producers, in the company of their charming headline on the vindication of Iraq realists in 2004, “Springtime for Realism”).

Some background is in order: I was a Jewish kid from Bethesda, Maryland who got his GED as soon as he turned 16. I was in community college for the next two years at the same time I was actively pursuing a highly unstable brew of radical involvements on both the left and right, fancying myself some kind of journalist-revolutionary (like 12-year old Henry Hill, I was living in a fantasy). The critical point of departure for my intellectual journey was some time just after 9/11, as I was becoming enamored with Justin Raimondo, who proved a formative influence to be sure, and discovering that his seemingly half-crazed notion about the Trotskyist roots of neoconservatism was very much true – it turned out my father knew several of them through the Harvard Young People’s Socialist League (Elliott Abrams, Josh Muravchik, and Daniel Pipes well; Bill Kristol just slightly. Anyone curious as to why he didn’t become a neocon should read his recent book on new urbanism).

In other words, the much-storied New York Jewish intellectual tradition, that Carol Kane assured the young Alvy Singer was a wonderful cultural stereotype to be reduced to, was in many ways a birthright. And yet I fell in love with TAC. In that first year or two as America was being conquered by Iraq, I still had high hopes for the Green Party, and even on the eve of TAC’s premier was startled to see Rod Dreher’s “Crunchy Cons” cover story at National Review and knowing there had to be a much, much, much better forum for this (by the time the book came out in 2006, I was of course well past recognizing that the typical figure covered in the book, if asked why they weren’t involved with the Green Party, would simply answer “because I like a steak every now and then”). When I was 18 and first living on my own, I subscribed to four magazines – The American Conservative, The Progressive, Chronicles, and an intriguingly semi-serious short-lived left-anarchist bi-monthly called Clamor.

I hardly need revisit the intellectual climate that surrounded the launching of the Iraq War, and why it was no contest between TAC and any more mainstream magazine – even the sincerely antiwar and often thoughtful liberals at The American Prospect could never stir the intellectual passions. Nor does a great deal need to be said here about what slowly but surely disillusioned me with the radical left, though to this day a large part of me is mystified as to why Bill Kauffman (or for that matter Jim Webb, at least in his career as a politician) is considered anything but a perfectly kosher man of the left. (more…)