The Cato Controversy: Tensions in Libertarian Land

Posted on May 2, 2012 by politicaloptic

The Cato Institute is a think tank that is practically synonymous with current-day libertarianism. Those connected with it at one time or another constitute a virtual who’s who of modern libertarians, including Murray Rothbard, the Koch brothers, Milton Friedman, Charles Murray, and a host of lesser known commentators and philosophes. It has performed much of the research behind today’s anti-government  movement, including ideas for the privatization of Social Security, the dilution of health and safety regulation, and the undermining of global action on climate change. The Institute’s success in getting its ideas out there epitomizes the success of “conservative liberty” in today’s politics.

Today, however, a cloud hangs over the Cato Institute. One of its founders and major shareholders, Charles Koch, is launching a lawsuit against its current leadership. Koch, who along with his brother David controls two of the four existing shares, is now claiming the right to take possession of a third following the death of a fellow shareholder. Although a released share normally reverts back to the remaining shareholders, some ambiguity exists about its disposition when a shareholder dies. There is no doubt, however, that if the Kochs  take over the third share, they effectively control the organization, since shareholders appoint board members who have the power to hire or fire the director, staff, and research fellows.

The dispute, which has generated passions on all sides, has resulted in the fracturing of the libertarian community. By becoming public it reveals an underside of conservative think tank politics that is rarely seen. Different participants, of course, view things in different ways. Koch and his supporters portray it as a case of legality, respect for contract, and consistency of purpose. They state that the organization was meant to be in the hands of a small group of founders with a defining purpose. They hold that another of the shareholders, Edward Crane, who was effectively in charge of Cato’s direction for some 25 years, diverted it to his own purposes. Crane and much of the Cato inner circle, on the other hand, see Koch’s lawsuit as a power play pure and simple. They see him attempting to use the organization for crassly political purposes and to intertwine it with his other undertakings. Their show of distaste for politicization, of course, means portraying themselves as relatively non-partisan, a somewhat unconvincing position in light of their conservative orthodoxy on most issues. Nonetheless, the Cato-ites portray Koch’s move as a vital threat to their independence.

A recent meeting in December 2011 between David Koch and Cato Board Chairman Bob Levy, who opposes a Koch take-over, brought many of these issues to the fore. The two men give different interpretations of the meeting, but their comments actually suggest a common theme. Levy understands David Koch as eager to make Cato more “responsive” to the needs of Koch organizations like the well-funded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. Cato would need to supply such groups with “intellectual ammunition” and essentially take closer “marching orders” from them.  David Koch uses more elevated language to summarize such matters. He admits telling Levy of the need to be more “effective in translating esoteric concepts into concrete deliverables.” “Deliverables” is  apparently another word for the achievement of policy change. He also admits saying that the Republican Party, “however flawed,” is the best hope of moving policy in the desired direction. What is needed is more effectiveness in reaching this overall goal.

A further insight into what the Koch brothers’ mean by “effectiveness” is evident from their less publicized remarks. In a 2006 interview with Brian Doherty (the author of Radicals for Capitalism), Charles Koch expresses his desire to develop a “science of liberty” that can be sold to the masses and converted into tangible political results. He speaks of an “integrated strategy” to bring about social change that sounds a bit like a Ford plant assembly line. This integrated approach involves a chain of connected activities “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organization to lobbying to litigation to political action.” He makes clear that the serial linkage from idea to end result is a wonderful conception not only in terms of achieving libertarian outcomes but of making the best use of his millions of donations to the cause. One can assume that Koch aspires to making the Cato Institute, the provider of “intellectual ammunition,” an integral link in his unbreakable chain.

It is revealing that many on the libertarian right have no problem with the Koch brothers in the abstract. Most of Cato’s current anti-Koch detractors were singing alleluias to the Koch brothers and their service to libertarianism as recently as a year ago. But facing the prospect of being in close quarters with the Kochs and subject to their command structure and factory discipline, they clearly have second thoughts.

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The Tale of Two Colsons

Posted on April 26, 2012 by politicaloptic

In the wake of Chuck Colson’s death, we hear a lot about the two Colsons. The theme usually comes in the form of a stark contrast: the Chuck Colson sullied by his early political misdeeds versus the Colson redeemed by his later religious reformation. The early Colson gained notoriety for  his authorship of the “enemies list,” his efforts to defame opponents, and his illegal actions under President Nixon. Later, after serving time in a federal facility, Colson seemed to emerge a changed man. He became a reborn follower of Christ and the creator of Prison Fellowship, a nationwide prison ministry. This narrative of two Colsons is pushed by Colson himself, whose own Fellowship describes him as the former “Watergate Crook.” The contrast between Colson past and present becomes the basis for a morality tale.

The problem with this simple narrative should be obvious. Even if one concedes Colson’s contributions in certain areas like prison reform in his later career, his adversarial and intolerant posture on many fronts suggests key points of continuity with the earlier Colson. He was closely aligned with the Religious Right for most of the later period, and actively engaged in the “culture war” on the side of social conservatives against moderates and progressives. On numerous issues he took positions seen as radical and close-minded by many Americans. Under the circumstances, it is worth treating the Chuck Colson transformation saga with skepticism.

There is little doubt that Colson was shaken in the aftermath of his transgressions and public humiliation. Moreover, there is no reason to question, it seems to me, the sincerity of his religious conversion under those circumstances. When the Christian Right first flexed its muscles in the 1980s, Colson was gun-shy about full-scale religious involvement in politics. Such a preoccupation with political affairs “diverts the church from its primary mission,” he stated in his book Kingdoms in Conflict (1987). He was openly critical of the dominionist goals of some in the movement, who talked of a Christian take-over and sought to impose a Christian solution on society. Taking a less controversial position, he endorsed religion’s role in working “through civil authority for the advancement of justice and human good” (p.118). His hero in this regard was William Wilberforce, the evangelical politician who helped to end slavery in 19th century Britain and worked with both religious and secular forces to bring it about. 

But in his real life commitments, Colson never seemed willing or able to adopt the balanced approach of a Wilberforce. Colson was caught up in the moral fervor of the newborn Christian Right with its focus on sexual mores and its confrontational posture toward gays, feminists, liberals, and others. He was a dedicated follower of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), the philosophical father of the Religious Right, who stressed the need to confront the alleged evils of secularism. Colson became a leading proponent of Schaeffer’s version of Christian Worldview as a way of critiquing the enemy and providing a so-called biblical way of approaching the world.  

As mentioned, Colson always felt uncomfortable with talk of theocracy. Nonetheless, he accepted the notion that Christianity had the leading role to play in returning America to its alleged Christian roots. He simply preferred to emphasize cultural and social, rather than political, means to bring about this transformation. In How Now Shall We Live?, he (and co-author Nancy Pearcey) makes clear his passion for redeeming “all God’s creation.” By this he means that all things need to be brought under the “lordship of Christ”: home, school, workshop, corporate boardroom, movie screen, concert stage, city council, legislative chamber (p. 296). In Colson’s vision of an ideal society, “there is no invisible dividing line between sacred and secular.”

Such blurring of lines, in direct repudiation of our Constitution and national ethos, is typical of the whole Christian rightist project. It is the necessary outcome of Colson’s working assumptions, namely, that secularism is an enemy to be eliminated from American life and that Christianity is designed to be a world-changing creed on all levels. The goal seems to be a society in which the biblical God stands as the final authority and evangelical Christianity plays the dominant role.   

The commonly heard tale of two Colsons survives the veracity test only on a superficial level. In his second life, Colson took on the rhetoric of righteousness and professed to follow it. But his fervent efforts to subdue the perceived enemy (i.e. the upholders of a neutral, secular society) and to force upon others his own radical view of the world are more characteristic of the old Colson than his allies would like to admit.

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The Buffett Rule and Democratic Tactics

Posted on April 19, 2012 by politicaloptic

Frames are important in politics. The way an issue is presented is sometimes of greater weight than the accuracy of one’s debating points or the clarity of one’s reasoning. What is critical is how one’s argument plays upon the experience of one’s audience and fits into a larger narrative. When repeated over and over, a theme that “fits” a set of preconceived notions usually sticks. This is why on issue after issue, the Republicans win and the Democrats lose. Republicans tend to be more strategically shrewd than the Democrats, as shown by their recent ability to control the dialogue on taxes, the deficit, and healthcare.

On a tactical level, the Democrats sometimes come up with a decent frame. Their attempt to force a Senate vote on the Buffett Rule is one such case. The Buffett Rule resolution, by requiring that taxpayers with fat incomes pay at the level of the rest of us collides with Republican insistence that “job producers” be given further relief. By showing that billionaires like Warren Buffet generally pay at a lower rate than their secretaries, the issue exposes the obscene truth of today’s system: income from passive investment is treated much more kindly by the IRS than the wages and salaries of working people.

But there is something timid and overly “safe” about the Buffett Rule frame. Certainly it calls attention to one symptom of inequality that Republicans are unwilling to address.  But as legislation, it is clearly more symbolic than substantive, since the Democrats single out a very small class of individuals (those with incomes over one million) and put into play a relatively meager amount of money in the overall scheme of things.  There is some truth, in other words, to the Republican claim that it is legislative “gimmickry.”  Even if it were to gain some traction with the public, the Republicans could fairly easily deflect it by closing a few Wall Street loopholes and throwing a break or two to the middle class.

The minimalist Buffett argument simply does not go far enough. It fails to hone in on the Republicans’ activist agenda, in particular their radical plan (the Ryan budget) to dismantle the New Deal and take us back to an unregulated form of capitalism with a “privatized” safety net. The Dems need to ruthlessly deconstruct this agenda and propose in its place a balanced one of their own.

Obama has called the GOP approach a form of “social Darwinism,” an accurate  description, but one that may go over the heads of some Americans. I prefer “Robin Hood in reverse.” Democrats need to emphasize that the approach is not simply one that defends the perquisites of the rich, but reverses the (mostly) progressive direction of history. It attempts to redistribute wealth upward, taking food stamps and education grants from the poor and middle class, then showers the savings produced upon the well-to-do. It is a cynical inversion of the American Dream for average Americans. This message  needs to be sharpened and, for maximum effect, combined with the narrative of a right-wing Tea Party movement siding with the haves against the have-nots.

It is time for Democrats to respond vigorously to Republicans who cast themselves as “courageous” and “responsible” agents confronting real economic problems. To any observer, it is not “responsible” to eviscerate  the safety net for the most vulnerable or to ask sacrifice from some but not others. And it is certainly not “responsible” to threaten to shut down the government if one’s extreme demands are not met. Progressives must go on the offensive and refuse to submit again to right-wing intimidation. Most important, they must do so with the people on their side.

Posted in economic policy, framing, political strategy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Republican Right and Saul Alinsky

Posted on April 12, 2012 by politicaloptic

The Republican Right can’t seem to get its mind off of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was the Chicago activist who organized the powerless and gave them a voice back in the old days when workers and minorities were mostly ignored. His book Rules for Radicals, written just before his death in 1972, was his advice to “realistic radicals” on how to bring about social change based on his experience. Those reviving his memory these days, however, are not on the left but on the right. For them, Alinsky has become a useful target, a left-wing stereotype, to get their constituents juiced up and motivated. The ideological function of their efforts is clear enough: to connect the untrendy activity of community organizing, and especially the word “radical,” with the present occupant of the White House, who as a former organizer himself was certainly familiar with the Alinsky legend.

For his disparagers on the right, Saul Alinsky serves as an ideal piñata. His foreign-sounding name (kind of like Trotsky), his Jewish background, his vocation so outside the experience of today’s middle America, make him a perfect proxy for “otherness.” His reputation for effectiveness and surprise tactics puts him, at least for those with good imaginations, in the conspiratorial mould. And his self-identification as a radical serves as a useful tag. Conservative revisionists have been eager to round out his vita and to connect the smudged portrait to all things  progressive, liberal, or left. Rush Limbaugh and the Fox contingent have worked overtime on these themes ever since the 2008 presidential campaign, and now are amplifying and reintroducing them in 2012. 

The typical distortions about Alinsky are fairly ridiculous. A Marxist, a communist, or a socialist perhaps? Sorry, but no. Alinsky was a consistent pragmatist who rejected the ideology of the communists and the confrontational fireworks of many 60’s radicals. “Dogma,” he stated, “whatever form it takes, is the ultimate enemy of human freedom.” Someone who condoned violence? Also untrue. Alinsky always worked within the system. His methods may have been eye-popping, as when he had people dump their garbage in a councilman’s front yard when he obstructed pick-up in their neighborhood. But violence was not part of his vocabulary. Compromise he defined as “a key and beautiful word.” Even conservatives grudgingly admired him, and William Buckley called him “an organizational genius.”

Rightists have been equally extravagant in making connections between their Alinsky strawman and today’s American progressives. Newt Gingrich has been especially sweeping in his claims, tying Alinsky vaguely to “secular socialist bureacracy” and making it seem like Obama was his direct apprentice in evil. Obama, it should be remembered, was ten when Alinsky died. Andrew Breitbart in his final post thought he had come up with a devastating revelation when he showed that Obama attended a play on Alinsky fifteen years ago and contributed to a panel on his life that included some radicals (with names nobody has ever heard of). If the Republican right aspires to traffick in “guilt by association,” is this the best it can do?

It is time for real historians to take over from the amateurs and place Saul Alinsky squarely in the best traditions of American progressivism. What is needed is a better liberal articulation of how democracy is supposed to work, and some truth-telling to counteract the baloney from the right.

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The Ayn Rand Budget

Posted on April 8, 2012 by politicaloptic

Paul Ryan, the author of the GOP’s recent budget proposal, is a big fan of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is the writer who inspired the young Ryan some fifteen years ago to get into politics. Today, unsurprisingly, her go-it-alone individualism permeates his worldview and guides his policy-making. Her novel Atlas Shrugged, a required text for his staffers, is the lens through which he sees the world. And to a large extent, her robust concept of free-enterpise capitalism lies behind Ryan’s budget plan, which favors tax breaks for the wealthy, reduced benefits for the poor and middle class, and  privatization of the nation’s safety net.

A closer view of Atlas Shrugged provides us with a unique insight into why Ryan’s budget priorities seem so lopsided in favor of the business elite. The novel boils down to a morality tale acted out in a modern industrial landscape. It presents a narrative of struggle between what the author sees as capitalist creativity and the forces that would throttle it. In the novel Rand juxtaposes two basic character types: heroic entrepreneurs and producers, on the one hand, and government bureaucrats, hangers-on, and welfare leeches, on the other. The entrepreneurs strive to preserve their freedom to benefit from their success, while a meddlesome government intervenes to seize the proceeds of their wealth and divert it into the pockets of paper-shufflers, drones, and non-producers.

The tension eventually leads to an open rebellion. But instead of the have-nots rising up against the haves, the formula is reversed. It is the entrepreneurs, not the workers, who go on strike. They withdraw their skills and expertise from the economy, and retire to a secluded mountain and await the results. Predictably enough, the economy crumbles. From a position of strength, the capitalists then make a radio broadcast to the nation. Their leader, John  Galt, lectures the masses on the topic of who really relies on whom. The true basis of prosperity is not the workers, he tells them, but the heroic job-producers. On that note, Galt demands a pure free-market utopia devoid of government intervention and safety nets. If the unproductive masses wish to see an end to the crisis, he declares, “it will be on our moral terms.”

For Ayn Rand, the capitalist producers embody a kind of a master class for whom the world should be supremely grateful. Their brand of noble entrepreneurship stands as a model for the rest of humanity. The ethic they represent is one that emphasizes pure economic freedom and spurns the idea of help-thy-neighbor. It is a philosophy that shows contempt for altruism and glorifies human self-interest. The philosophy has strong anti-democratic overtones as well, showing disapproval of representative government acting for the expressed needs of the majority. The Ayn Rand philosophy in effect is a glorification of economic elitism and top-down authority by the materially successful.

Rand has always been known for her dogmatic convictions. This is not so surprising, given her early education in Lenin’s Russia, where deviation from the party line was viewed as heresy. Her free-market creed was obviously a way of reacting to the regimentation she faced, but her authoritarian leanings are still unmistakable.

What is surprising is that Rand’s ideas have found so much support in the United States, a nation premised on “we the people.” The cartoonish portrayal of master builders aligned against their so-called inferiors rings false in a society dedicated to the belief that all are created equal and that power derives from the consent of the governed. Paul Ryan’s Randian worldview, with its mean distinctions between producers and non-producers, allows him to stoke openly the fires of inequality. It is a sad commentary on how far he and the GOP have strayed from our democratic traditions.

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The GOP Budget Strategy: Reframing plus Shock Doctrine

Posted on April 3, 2012 by politicaloptic

Without a doubt, the Republicans seem set upon a high-risk strategy. Their congressional contingent last week decided to put all their chips on the Paul Ryan budget plan (all but ten Republicans voted for it in the House), which if  adopted would leave the American safety net in tatters. If fully adopted, it would de-federalize Medicare, America’s most important social program, and leave individual citizens having to foot the bill for a larger and larger share of it in the future.  And while gutting one of America’s most popular programs, it would hand the wealthiest Americans an enormous gift to the tune of trillions of future tax dollars.

From a purely economic point of view, the plan would not come close to reducing the deficit as advertised. Paul Krugman calls it “the most fraudulent budget in American history” for good reason. The plan claims to shrink the deficit by getting rid of tax loopholes, but since the largest and most obvious candidates for elimination, such as the loophole allowing the wealthy to pay a mere 14% tax for income from capital, have been ruled out by the Republicans, it is hard to take their revenue ideas seriously.

If the budget proposal is skewed in its priorities and fails to offer an economic argument that adds up, how can the Republicans defend it, especially in an important election year when the Democrats will be ready to target it? The answer is that Republicans will rely on their proven ability to spin things their way and will lay out a narrative that furthers their obectives. Their strategy, which can be surmised from current pronouncements, involves two key elements. First, it involves linguistically reframing the economic issues to have a maximum impact on voters. Secondly, it relies on a “shock” strategy similar to that utilized by Scott Walker and other GOP governors following the 2010 elections. As noted in Naomi Kelin’s famous book (The Shock Doctrine), the strategy uses a crisis, or the threat of one, to propose  revamping the economic order and instituting maximum deregulation.

On the reframing issue, the Republicans learned some lessons from their less than successful rollout of Ryan’s 2011 plan, which was widely panned as an assault on the safety net and a gift to the wealthy. This year they revived most of the earlier plan’s features, but made sure the new version would undergo some verbal retuning to guarantee it would be more pleasing to popular ears, thanks to some careful internal polling and product testing. As Politico’s Jake Sherman points out, they now call their reform of Medicare “bipartisan” (based on Democrat Ron Wyden’s brief flirtation with Paul Ryan) and talk of “fixing” Medicare to keep it from going “bankrupt.” They assure Americans over 55, a key voting block, that they won’t be “affected” and will have the choice of staying in the current Medicare system or using a new one. The reframing strategy has already been given a dry run in a race in Nevada last fall, in which Republican Mark Amodei defeated his Democratic opponent after first been threatened with defeat. The GOP is now ready to roll the new framing out on a national stage.

A shock-doctrine scenario is equally essential to the strategy. Republicans naturally are pushing the panic button not on the issue of creating jobs, but on the issue that highlights their favorite theme of responsibility, i.e. spending and the deficit. These are issues, of course, on which they have not excelled in recent years. Without embarrassment, however, they beat the drum against government excess and warn darkly of “irresponsibility.” Specifically, they call Medicare broken and predict economic catastrophe unless something is done quickly to solve it. This year they have a proven means of turning the screws and raising the volume: congressional disruption. The Ryan plan explicitly breaks the hard-won agreement made last year with the Democrats on a budget figure, setting the stage this summer for another ugly round of congressional warfare. By assuring gridlock on the budget, the Republicans can place the issue of the deficit at the center of debate, and position themselves as heroic defenders of “tough” decisions in times of crisis, fighting against undisciplined and feckless Democrats. 

All of this Republican stategizing and refiguring puts a lot of pressure on the Democrats to do what they have hitherto been so inept at doing: making people see through the the haze and support what is in the national interest. One can only hope they step up to the plate this time.

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“Stand Your Ground” and NRA Justice

Posted on March 27, 2012 by politicaloptic

Above and beyond the outrageous circumstances connected with the killing of Trayvon Martin, there is something awfully creepy about the “stand your ground laws” being pushed by the NRA (National Rifle Association) and its right-wing allies. Under our system of law, people are supposed to be accountable for their actions. When possible crimes are committed, there are police forces to investigate, prosecutors and defense attorneys to litigate, judges and juries to decide, and corrections institutions to administer. But now we see that there is a new class of individuals who can circumvent all that legal red tape: Those who kill and claim they did so in self-defense.

A new “justifiable” form of preemptive force is being codified before our eyes. If you think you are threatened, then homocide is justified anywhere, any time. An individual with no training and often no background check for the purchase of his/her weapon is now allowed to make an incontestable judgment call about whether to take another person’s life. Compare such a license to kill with the obligations of our community police officers, who are rigorously trained in handling confrontational situations. As former  Miami police chief John F. Timoney points out, a police officer “is held to account for every single bullet he or she discharges.” Why, he asks, should an untrained private individual be given more rights in the use of deadly force?

The most controversial aspect of these new laws isn’t that they make it difficult to win  a conviction against users of deadly force by making the prosecution bear the burden of proof. In virtually all states, the prosecution has traditionally had to shoulder that burden in self-defense cases. No, what is truly nutty about them is that they stipulate that those who pull the trigger and then claim self-defense are effectively immunized from judicial review in the first place. Section 776.032 of the Florida Statutes holds that the person who uses such force is “immune from criminal prosecution” and cannot be arrested without “probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.”

Essentially, the statute is pure Catch-22. The highly relevant matter of whether a killing is in fact an instance of self-defense is made virtually impossible to determine, since a determination of probable cause generally comes after an arrest, when the user of force would be subject to interrogation. Likewise, a determination of guilt or innocence comes after a trial, when an impartial jury would be able to weigh the facts. Since both arrest and trial are ruled out on the assumption that the defendant is innocent based on his own word, the entire justice process is circumvented. Justice begins and ends when the trigger is pulled. Instead of being grounded on evidence, justice is grounded on self-evidence.

In confrontational situations, the armed individual can thus count on absolute judicial protection, while the unarmed person must settle for its total absence. The latter’s life or death is entirely contingent on the discretion, judgment, and honesty of the legally invulnerable weapon holder.  It is hard to recall an instance where legal protections are so unequal or where the rights of individuals are based so explicitly on the amount of raw physical power they wield. If the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” for all persons, means anything, it should mean an end to such caricatures of law.

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For David Brooks, It’s All about Original Sin

Posted on March 23, 2012 by politicaloptic

Sigh. David Brooks is back at it again on original sin. It seems that whenever a heinous act is featured on the news, Brooks directs our attention to the dark underbelly of our own natures. Back in November, it was the child abuse scandal at Penn State. Brooks chastised those who expressed outrage about it for assuming a “superior” attitude and not recognizing their own inner failings. Now the killing spree of a U.S. soldier brings forth similar reactions on Brooks’ part. Those condemning the killer should contemplate the evil in their own hearts, he tells us. In our modern secular world, we are all products of self-deception, carrying around conceptions of our “inner wonderfulness” rather than of our true inner depravity.

Brooks’ real purpose, of course, is to transform such incidents into critiques of our contemporary culture. If we want to assign fault, he suggests, we should look not at discrete individuals or immediate causes but at our defective worldview. In a recent discussion on Meet the Press, Brooks remarked: “You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is.” The result of such muddying is that people get off the hook with “an easy conscience.” It’s been downhill, it appears, ever since the dark days of Woodstock and Roe v. Wade, when sin began to be eradicated from our collective consciousness.

Viewed strategically, the tendency to blame the worldview should be seen for what it is: a resort to a culture war framework. It is not a lot different from the language used by Gingrich, Santorum, Buchanan, and others to shift the blame for a list of society’s ills onto a modern culture they do not approve of. It has also been a cover for so-called guardians of morality like the Catholic Church, an institution that has sought to absolve itself of its own scandals by targeting secularism.  David Brooks presents a sophisticated version of the trope.

Brooks clings to the idea of original sin for an obvious reason: he believes the very idea of conservatism is built upon it. The myth of a fallen humanity allows conservatives to justify orderly authority and traditional norms in order to keep things in check. The focus on internal sin makes people “responsible amidst our frailties,” he says, and gives people “scripts to follow” when they confront it. It leads in his mind to a stable moral order.

The problem is that there is little evidence to show that being aware of one’s sinfulness will make one act more responsibly than someone else who is less internally fraught. What we all know is that such thinking encourages guilt. If our past ancestors are any testament, it makes people dwell on things that are forbidden (often having to do with sex) and conjures up punishments to go along with them. All too often, moreover, it causes people to see evils where they do not exist. The individual’s sin in this sense is projected onto the outside world and takes on a shape of its own, often unpredictable. Witch trials and crusades only occur when people see the devil’s work in other individuals and forces.

Given the number of culture warriors in our midst who purport to have a special knowledge of sin, it helps to be armed with a certain skepticism about claims in that realm. David Brooks should be careful what he wishes for.

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Why is Santorum Doing Better with Evangelicals than Catholics?

Posted on March 19, 2012 by politicaloptic

Rick Santorum has been cleaning up in the Bible Belt. Although a practicing Catholic, he has recently won primaries in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama, not exactly Papist strongholds. He has also done well in the rural areas of rustbelt states, where evangelicals predominate. On the other hand, he doesn’t seem to be clicking with Catholics. Joan Walsh at Salon comments that he isn’t even getting much support from his own Catholic High School in Illinois, which he avoids in favor of more evangelically friendly venues. Exit polls bear out this strange alignment of forces. The Ohio polls, for example, show him beating Romney among white evangelicals by 17 percentage points and losing among Catholics by 13 per cent.

The fact that people seem to have little trouble identifying outside of their denomination is no great surprise, of course, in our present age. Traditional sectarianism in the form of Protestant-Catholic hostility is mostly a thing of the past. Individuals who mix their religion and politics are much more likely to care about issues like abortion or same-sex marriage than they are about denominational allegiance, and to vote accordingly. 

So what is it about Rick Santorum that is more likely to attract evangelical voters and turn off Catholic ones? On the surface Santorum’s conservativism actually would seem to hold appeal for both constituencies (let’s remember that in the Republican primaries most evangelicals and Catholics lean conservative). As something of a hybrid Christian in practice, he combines elements of both Catholicism and Protestantism: he couples an old school, authoritarian  Catholicism with a populist right-wing evangelicalism. And his conservative position on social issues is popular in both camps.

But one of Santorum’s key characteristics is that he seems to be angry about something. He is a man of intense religiosity who is antagonistic towards the ethos of America as it now stands and is sickened by the idea of separation of church and state. This does not sit well with many Catholics, even conservative ones, who in the distant past often considered themselves outsiders, but in the years since John F. Kennedy’s presidency have mostly made peace with America and its culture. They simply do not bear the grudge against America today that Santorum exhibits on a daily basis. Not only this, many Catholics undoubtably resent Santorum’s holier-than-thou brand of Catholicism. He follows a strict form of the Catholic religion that emphasizes purity and obedience, and he identifies with two cult-like organizations within the Church known for their secrecy and extreme views, Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ. In general, Santorum has trouble hiding his disdain for those fellow Catholics who have made compromises with the surrounding culture.

Santorum’s on-your-sleeve religiosity, on the other hand, is a point of attraction for evangelicals. Regarding themselves as today’s “out” group, they share Santorum’s sense of resentment, and perceive the world in  terms of persecution and exclusion from the  public square. In their eyes and Santorum’s, today’s modern culture is profoundly rotten, the product of an aggressive secular worldview. In spite of his Catholic training, Santorum talks their language and walks their walk. As a former member of a Bible study group in Congress, he quotes Scripture liberally. He supports home-schooling, parental rights, intelligent design, and Christian history, all key points among evangelicals. And he practices and preaches a type of culture war they find congenial.

What conservative evangelicals see in Santorum is someone who would be willing, if he were able, to impose a different level of faith in America and to see it applied in political ways. This is something most of America’s Catholics would not presume to do.

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The Fox Effect

Posted on March 16, 2012 by politicaloptic

Fox News has found a new public enemy. This time it’s not Acorn, George Soros, or the Occupiers of Wall Street. Instead it’s an entity with a low profile and a tedious job: Media Matters, the watchdog  organization that tracks conservative news sources and checks their accuracy. For two months beginning in June 2011, and sporadically thereafter, Fox has been going after Media Matters as though it were Satan himself, accusing it of being inflammatory and overly aggressive in performing its task. The people at Fox are calling for an end to the organization’s tax-exempt status and instructing their viewers on how to file complaints against it with the IRS.

The reason for Fox’s campaign is not difficult to imagine. Media Matters has hit a raw nerve. For several years now, the organization has been recording Fox News’ journalistic misbehavior on a day-to-day basis. Recently it let it be known that it was preparing a book detailing Fox’s style of operation. Not surprisingly, Fox’s reaction was swift and predictable: to damage the messenger as decisively as possible.

Now the book, entitled The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned A Network into a Propaganda Machine, is on store bookshelves. For the many who avoid Fox News because of its unsavory reputation, the book will no doubt confirm their general impressions. But this is no reason to pass it by. Make no mistake: this is an important book that provides a fascinating look at the rise of faux reporting and the trajectory of right-wing influence on TV news.

From the outset, the authors (David Brock, Ari Rabin-Havt and MM staff) point out that the problem with Fox is not “bias” per se. Even with the best sort of journalism, bias inevitably enters the picture to some degree, even if it expresses itself in something as simple as topic selection. None of the media are free of it. The basic problem is that Fox has gone far beyond bias and into the business of molding opinion and presenting a platform. As the book states, Fox has become “a news business that is willing to put politics above all else.” This political emphasis permeates its entire operation from news to discussion to opinion.

Several key points stand out. First, the book substantiates the premeditated nature of Fox’s news slanting. Although Fox often speaks of the “firewall” between its news and opinion sections, whatever independence the news side had in its early years effectively ended in late 2008, when Brit Hume retired as Fox News managing editor of Fox News’ Washington, D.C. bureau. Hume, who had at least some core of journalistic professionalism, was replaced by a right-wing ideologue by the name of Bill Sammon, who had worked at the Moonie publication, Washington Times, and authored several hagiographies of George W. Bush. Sammon’s political heavy-handedness gibed perfectly with that of his boss, Roger Ailes, a man born with sword in hand. During the Obama administration, the two men developed political spin into an art form. The book corroborates this trend with ample evidence: internal emails from Sammon instructing newscasters on how to frame issues in partisan ways, the reporting of Republican press releases verbatim as though they were news, and the machine-like coordination between newscasters and editorialists (Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc.) on whatever Fox’s exposé du jour might be, almost always aimed at the left.

Secondly, the book chronicles how Fox did not just spin news, but created it out of very thin tissue. It made a habit of latching onto inconsequential episodes, misconstruing them to convey a predetermined message, and magnifying their significance. The story surrounding Acorn, a non-profit organization working to extend voting registration in depressed communities, was the most notorious of such episodes. With its progressive record, Acorn was on the top of Fox’s list of least-favorite organizations. Fox was thus happy to take advantage of an opportunity in which a low-level Acorn employee, reacting to a right-wing prankster, made funny and sarcastic remarks that could be hyped as an “admission” of law-breaking. Fox blew up the so-called story and within weeks was able to lay claim to one of its great “victories”: the federal defunding of the organization. Similar non-events involving climate scientists, Black Panthers, and targeted officials have been turned into similar propaganda opportunities.

Third, Fox employees have readily crossed the line into outright political advocacy. Unlike the other major news organizations, which suspend employees on the mere suggestion of partisan activity, Fox allows its employees to wear their advocacy on their sleeve. Fox reporters and opinion makers, for example, were instrumental in chaperoning the right-wing tea parties into existence, and, during the 2010 elections, served not simply as cheerleaders for GOP candidates but as money conduits for their campaigns.

So what is the Fox effect? Fox, as much as any other entity, has contributed to our present-day “post-truth politics.” It has subordinated journalism to considerations of power and influence. Its promotion of divisiveness has helped to make governing an increasingly futile exercise. And its cynical manipulation of politics has lowered the status of government in the eyes of the American people. The good news is that with the aid of organizations like Media Matters, more and more people are wising up to Fox’s game.

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