Fragment #3 or how Bill Haley stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/interview/tylermay5.html

Between 1949 and 1991, the world had to consider its complete destruction. The possibility of auto-genocide by proxy marked out a porous barrier between a known universe and one where any rules and any knowledge broke down. This Event Horizon presented even the most inhuman of ideologue with a great void, a post human and post pretention world.

Good for Bill for imagining some up side

More Goldberg.......Lucky lucky youse

Hello, comrades

I've been pretty ill for the last 6 months or so and have been not up to much blogging wise. I have a few things in my draft folder that I might put up for completeness sake. But apart from a few random bursts of energy, it seems the Republic might be beyond my feeble will :) I'll see how it goes and will surely lurk around comrades blogs, with an occasional ramble

Anyhoo found this, care of Peter Ryley aka Fat Man

http://www.hnn.us/articles/122469.html

Four historians take on 'Liberal Fascism'.

I will add they do seem to miss a trick. Goldberg's thesis depends on three definitions; his highly idiosyncratic take on fascism i.e purely statist with leader cult, his depiction of the right in America as being essentially small government/low taxes, his belief that applies to post war Italy and post depression Germany.

All three are wrong.

I've mentioned at length the problems with his definition here

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/06/republic-eventually-reviewsliberal.html

and briefly mentioned the other two.

I shall expand (Told you were lucky). To proclaim the right or conservatism (Goldberg is not consistent when he talks about them) as small government/low taxes or 'Classical Liberalism as he puts it in his reply to the historians above is quite a leap. Conservatism, if we take its current configuration is a synthesis of four elements;
A - Religious politics,
B - rejection of the New Deal,
C - security Keynesianism,
D - rejection of the Great Society.

Only part of two (B & D) of these are really small statist issues. To begin with A, using the state to promote or, very charitably, 'protect' religion is very far from small state. It fies in the face of the sacred respect for the constitution conservatism proclaims. Bear in mind, Mike Huckerbee, the last competitor to John McCain in the Republican presidentual primaries in 2008, is a long term advocate of making Christian supremacy (no doubt of the soft and cuddly type) part of the founding document. Merely monitoring Christian and non-Christian numbers in a purely benign way, an essential part of maintaining a Christian nation, is a vast expansion of state power, far beyond any census.What is small government in the illegalisation of Abortion, in the insistence on school prayer, on controlling debate?

B is more complicated than the 'Rugged Individualist' Conservatives or the Libertarian wing of the GOP or the various Randian/Paulian grouplets make out. The New deal certainly increased the state, but it also shifted its focus. By coming to some type of social compact with the unions and ending many of the lopholes in the tax codes, FDR took away the protective arm of the state away from much of American industry and commerce. Whilst saving the banks, no longer would the state act as a free militia to private enterprise against its citizens. The state, as part of the National Liberal program of industrialisation that had reigned supreme from 1863-1912, was a vital big brother to American 'individualism', protecting it from British and German competition, breaking organised labour and direct infrastructure investment. The increase in the state was one of degree, not kind.

When US Conservatives say ‘lets get back to small government’, what do they mean? When? The mid eighties with taxes higher that today? The 1920s when much of the bread basket neared starvation and the economy reached over saturation and collapse? The late 1860s when much of the country was under military rule? The 1790s when the nation was less than a tenth of the size and had a population under 4 million? When? C is the counter point to FDR's social Keynesianism. The vast military apparatus that was created during WWII and maintained into the cold war was and remains a vast component of economic prosperity in the US. Via a regulated use of vast sums of tax payer money, pork was brought and deals made. While it is difficult to quantify the amount gained by private industry via subsidised research and development, a huge workforce of highly trained engineers, workers and white collar staff exist at the end of the military complex’s teat.

The sanctity of this is hardwired into the conservative program. The plethora of programs started under the Eisenhower administration, few of which saw the light of day but consumed multiple billions, were a clear exercise in security Keynesianism, remarkably surpassed by the Reagan administration without regard to budgetary limitations. The modest program of re-entrenchment pursued by the Kennedy and Clinton administrations created a maelstrom of conservative protests.

It is worth noting that the rise in military spending tends to somewhat spotty. Having restarted Star wars, the Bush administration could not afford to up-armour its Humvees in Iraq

I would also add to security Keynesianism the notion of the war on crime/drugs. This has been a huge business, with a thriving market for jails to reinvigorate depressed areas. Oddly these wars, plainly counter-productive, disruptive of due process and liberties, harmful and very expensive must be fought. Beyond a few suddenly quiet Libertarians, this is a conservative given.

D again is more complicated. For all of the moaning about welfare programs, much of the bile, the rhetoric and the policy is aimed at reversing the gain in rights and the presumptions within those advances. What seems to drive much of the US conservative movement is a wish for the state to continue to discriminate and to push the excepted norms of liberty into a pre-civil rights world. The state must protect a form of social solidarity from the manifestations of these reforms. The state must protect the sacred banner, English as a first language, the nature of marriage, the rates of teen pregnancy. It suddenly must do all to return the nation to the pre-60s pristine environment.

No. Even in the land of the free, to claim conservatism as solely or even mostly a movement of small government/low taxes is asinine.

How does this definition of the right/conservatives travel to 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany?

Badly.

The major party of Italian Industrialists, the ANI , was a clear supporter of state planning, cartels and regulation, albeit controlled by them. They were to form the bridge between the Fascists and the elite within the Royal court and provide the foundation of the Fascist bureaucracy.

Italian Conservatism looked to the state to provide both a support to the hierarchies of rural society and promote forcefully industrialisation to maintain Italian pretensions of being a major power. For some reason, they had yet to realise the genius of Atlas Shrugged and school vouchers.

The bete noire of both Fascist and Conservative, along with much of the revolutionary left was Giollitti. He was considered the motif of Italian decadence and decay. Yet, he was one of the first social Liberals, much before Wilson. He created agreements with Unions, created rudimentary welfare schemes and sought to use the state to bring about a liberal social peace. To the syndicalists he was the ‘Great Domesticator’, taming the working class with material benefits and corrupting their leadership within the government. Yet according to Goldberg, he should have been Mussolini’s and the Movement’s hero, their patriach.

In Germany, there is even less of a case. The Vaterland Partei, the General Staff backed wartime front, was intrinsically linked to increasing state power for Conservative Militarist ends. Out of it were to come most of the early DAP/NSDAP leadership. Since Bismarck, the German right had been committed to some form of staatsocialismus to counteract the rise of the SDP. In the run up to the war and after, the German right looked to state mechanisms to revive traditional society via targeted welfare, reinforcing social structures, and thus mobilising the masses around Germany. As hard as you wish to look, no large component of the German right fits Goldberg’s description

Utter udder fail

The Republic does Weber - An ideal type for....Liberalism

Parts 1

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/07/conservatism-mit-added-weber.html

2

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/05/republic-does-weber-ideal-type.html

3

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/05/republic-does-weber-ideal-type_08.html‘We Socialists consider Liberals to be dangerous compromisers’ – a very svelte Christopher Hitchens 1988
Liberalism in its many forms is probably the most important political ideology ever conceived. Whilst under its own banner, much of the world was transformed materially and conceptually; its offspring, Socialism and Nationalism continued to reassess and remodel human society. Liberalism, in many ways, charted and defined the rules and parameters of modern secular politics. Even as a dialectical antithesis or an inveterate and insidious creed o'corruption, Liberalism laid down the means and the expected norms of political thought and political activity. What meanings do the language of Rights, those of Laws or the nature of property or nationhood have without a basis within the Liberal canon. Liberalism makes up the political DNA of modern political discourse. It is a Leviathan, at times soft hearted, at other ruthlessly pitiless.
As for my ideal type, here goes:-

'Liberalism seeks a form of governance that strikes a balance between social stability and solidarity and defending against arbitrary rule via maximising individual liberty in a multitude of forms. The nature of both sides of this equation are informed by legalistic means almost to the point of fetish. It is essentially a materialistic creed that links self-worth and self-esteem directly to property but seeks to counter the alienating consequences of this reductionism by a collective nomos'

Unpacking blah blah

‘Liberalism seeks a form of governance...’ Liberalism is focused on government. Its central historical problem was the nature of ruling. How can one rule fairly, how can one rule legitimately, how one can rule effectively? Via wise governance, Liberal thought saw and continues sees the possibility of progress, of historical mechanisms driving towards a better world. Whilst the details of the 'end' are generally vague and the determination to overcome 'obstacles' varies, there is a clear dialectical relationship, a temporal and an implicitly futorial one, between action over and within governance and the improvement of humanity. When Locke or Smith saw the stirrings of revolutionary social changes, they attributed them to the forms of governance most informed by basic liberal tenets.

‘....that strikes a balance....’ Here is a core, indeed key element in Liberalism. Locke and others pondered the absolutist Leviathan and had to concede, after the bloody chaos of the 17th century, that some supra-individual overarching power was needed for order to survive. They were no anarchists, as Liberals today remain. Yet they dissented from Hobbes monarchical arbiter. Rather they conceived of an abstract state, directed not by the will of one deity anointed ruler, but by an aggregate of interests, a public will.

‘....between social stability and solidarity....’ Long before Marx, Durkheim, Tonnes or Simmel considered the centrifugal nature of an entirely ‘free’ society, Liberal thought had been painfully troubled by it. Liberals were no Levellers and sought to destroy idols, not out of sheer ecstasy of demolition, but to further human improvement within their own prejudices. A heat death society, one driven solely by individual passions was as abhorrent to the Liberal as a choreographed Tyranny.

As such, Liberals have attempt to find some suitable 'glue' for their societies. The principle of Nationality was an early candidate as witnessed in Defoe's popular francophobia and the Gironde's 'pure' hearted concern for those beyond the pale. American Nationalism is an undoubtably a child of Liberalism, both as a form of exceptionism and a sacred motive to reform/help/rule the rest of the world. In time, basically a-liberal sectarianism, racism or ‘Third Estatism’ (a vertical cleavage between producers and idlers) has also been synthesised.

‘…and defending against arbitrary rule...’ Liberalism, as a child of the enlightenment, carries within it a rejection of despotism and its historical characterisation of the absolutism regimes it sought to oust. While this may be partial and one-eyed, it is an important tenant. Resisting a form of tyranny, made akin to that faced by the pantheon of Liberal heroes, is an essential part of the Liberal makeup. One can still see the rhetoric and policy of the Third estate over the idlers and petty despots today. Be it Islamist regimes by pro-war Libs, or ‘plutocratic corporations’ by American Democrats or the perfidious nature of institutionalised poverty by Social Libs. Even the Neo-Liberals use such bombast when attacking the over-arching State. Arbitary rule, as in rule sans law, is abhorrent.

‘…via maximising individual liberty in a multitude of forms …’ As such, the defence against the despots/tyrants/idlers the maximum possible level of liberty within society. How much is changeable, as Liberals sought to change their societies without breaking them. For American Liberals, the dangers inherent in manifesting this aim for the Black chattel vital to the basis of American agriculture demanded a considerable and painful amount of circumspection and polluting compromise. Mills might well have been ahead of his time when he said ‘Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign’ but as a philosopher, his words had to be taken, at best, as something for later generations, or at worse, pious nonsense. Maximising Liberty, not perfect liberty was the Liberal creed.

The forms in which this was done varied as the ‘tyranny’ changed faces. Emancipation from the devilish travails of priesthood and sceptre might be replaced by those of peasant obscurism and idleness. Breaking the chains of Plutocracy and corruption might be replaced by the defeating the bane of racist laws or smiting nefarious red tape. Over-blown rhetoric aside, anything that seems to upset the balance, tilting into Hobbesian heat death or stony Leviathan, is to be conquered

‘... The natures of both sides of this equation are informed by legalistic means almost to the point of fetish…’ For the Liberal, the law cut both against anarchy and despotism. The law, when justly conceived and carried out (again greatly variable concepts….consider the long heritage of the torturable and non-torturable classes), is king. As a Lawyers’ creed, Liberalism is wedded to the law and legalistic methodology. The law provides both a rational and a-arbitrary route to gain consensus and punish as well as a in-built capacity to circumvent itself if the need arises. Robespierre, when he conceived of a situation too dangerous and fast moving for ‘normal’ legality, created a new class of legal norms, faster and more ruthless. Yet, he could not dispense with it. Consider the somewhat chicken-headed attempts to get or deny UN authority during the invasion of Iraq.

‘…It is essentially a materialistic creed …’ Which is not to say it is anti-spiritual. Rather, its dialectic is material. Progress is a matter of more, quicker, further and better. The liberal century, 1777-1914 was a parade of plenty for the ‘civilised’, the ‘enlightened’, the Liberal. More railway track, more yards of cotton, more boxes of matches, more science explored, more miles mapped. Whilst, the next fifty years somewhat contradicted this seemly endless momentum, material progress remained within Liberalism.

‘…that links self-worth and self-esteem directly to property…’ And the height of progress was universal or nearly so property ownership. Mass materialism was a primary defence against the serf owning divine lord, the centralised state, the communist collective, dehumanising poverty. For the Liberal, property became a rite of passage for the young or the self-made man. Before property, how could an individual be, how could they be worthy of the fullest extent of liberty? This absolute line has been modified, so rights are dealt out on the understanding property will eventually follow or at least be fervently sought. The property less freak or the society that cannot provide such opportunities is to be pitied.

‘….but seeks to counter the alienating consequences of this reductionism by a collective nomos’ Yet this property fetish must be countered by the aforementioned collective understandings. The anarchy of the rich must be tempered to a benevolent patriarchy. Liberalism demands of the rich only they be willing to forgo some of the maximum extent of their liberties to keep social peace. Much of this is material i.e. welfare, progressive taxation, much is mythos.

I too am Seismic Shock....

....tho hairier, far less work ethic and with questionable personal hygiene

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/anglican-vicar-uses-police-to-intimidate-blogger

(H/t Mod)