Evil Eliciting the Challenge of a Conscious Good
As Josh said yesterday, it's clear that the McCain campaign will finish up the race with a Greatest Hits of their racist McCarthyite campaign. Their bet? The media won't fight back with enough force to make calling Obama a Muslim socialist terrorist a net negative.
The media sphere proving them wrong would be a victory not just for the Obama campaign, but for society as a whole and the forces of tolerance and rationality broadly. And some people are making an effort.
Louis Hartz wrote in The Liberal Tradition in America of McCarthyism not just as a threat but as an opportunity. He wrote (in 1955):
You can turn the issue of McCarthyism upside down: when as the meaning of civil liberties been more ardently understood than now? A dialectic process is at work, evil eliciting the challenge of a conscious good, so that in difficult moments progress is made. The outcome of the battle between intensified "Americanism" and new enlightenment is still an open question.It is the same battle we see now.
The battle between "intensified 'Americanism'," by which Hartz means the kind of rabid nationalism McCain and Palin are now stoking and McCarthy stoked before them, is not a battle between liberals and conservatives. It is instead a battle between demagogues and rationalists, those who would rule through fear and division and those who believe in an enlightened progress.
That's why Colin Powell's direct assault on the McCain campaign was so important. Playing his role as statesman, Powell endorsed Obama and highlighted the valour and sacrifice of a Muslim-American soldier, to push back against the forces of "intensified 'Americanism'."
So did Campbell Brown last week when she did the same thing by calling bullshit on the same "Muslim" as smear campaign. Brown is insisting that media elites do have a roll in distinguishing between demagoguery and argument regardless of ideology.
WIll there be more Powells and Browns? Moderate conservatives who will push back against demagogues despite their ideological leanings? Media elites who are willing to take the heat for engaging because they believe rising to the challenge of evil is more important?
That strikes me as the question of the next two weeks.
Both NY Times and LA Times have dismissed the Acorn story as pretty much completely wrong and intentionally misleading. That's a couple of strong votes for rationalism.
October 20, 2008 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
What I am most concerned with is efforts by McCain forces to harass and intimidate voters, play games with voter lists and do other things to suppress Democratic votes. We have already seen reports about tires being slashed, about early voters being forced to run ugly gauntlets, about the recruiting of military veterans, police and firemen to form poll. There is a more intense than usual Brownshirt feel to what is going on out there in Republican-land, and we need to call attention to it, and fight back at attempts to intimidate and disenfranchise voters.
October 20, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Be careful what you ask for. The next thing you know, an vegan, atheist, gay man whose parents are from France and Afghanistan will be President.
In all honesty, it takes a special person to mentor people towards personally reflection; to see if we are honestly as good as we think we are. A rarity for sure. I think it would be a greater challenge to lead us just to the whole-hearted realization that the belief in natural law is an ultimate principle. The same way people profess the ways of Jesus, yet are not willing to sacrifice their identity for him. For all we claim our American beatitudes, just how do we actually measure up?
More likely, there will be someone willing to call others out. It is easy to play the role of public defender. There will be someone who figures out how to position themselves to rise to such a position of demagogue. Does this sound horribly fatalistic? We don't mind taking people down, but we never see that the other person is us. (I think that is something a really dead person said) It just seems that there is always someone to crusade against.
Less optimistic is projecting this question to how we will react when our American Dream moves overseas or becomes destabilized with growing competition. As Hartz questions, will we use such a challenge to reflect? It seems like the only lesson we learned from the last time, is that framing a cause with unsupported high ideals will still whoop up a following.
October 20, 2008 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will there be more Powell's and Brown's?
Andrew, aside from the grammatically apostrophes in the above names, it is exceedingly wrong to ask questions in a blog post.
TPM is already like the Politico of the "Left" -- as in obviously afraid to take a position on anything.
Asking "questions" of readers -- who do not have front page access like you do -- is somewhat patronizingly and pathetic.
Just say what you think and present evidence for it.
Cheers.
October 21, 2008 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well Doug, a few things. First, fixed the apostrophes. Thanks for the catch on the stupid error there.
As for TPM being "afraid to take a position on anything." Have you actually read this site? Even though I've seen you around, I have to assume you haven't actually ever read this site. I also have to assume you didn't actually read this blog post, in which I linked to the editor of this site calling out McCain's smear tactics for about the 14th time on the front page of this site.
Finally, the questions were not for you or any other reader. I was saying those are the questions we'll all be watching to see the answers to in the coming weeks.
Cheers.
October 21, 2008 7:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew, [in addition to] the grammatical apostrophes in the above names, it is exceedingly wrong to ask questions in a blog post.
TPM is already like the Politico of the "Left"; as in, obviously afraid to take a position on anything.
Asking "question[s]" to readers, who do not have front page access like you do, is somewhat patronizing and pathetic.
Just say what you think and present evidence for it.
Cheers
Only for the advancement of syntactic, universal order, I edited your post for your reference. This comment, in no way, represents a rhetorical euphemism.
In response to your post, I must disagree. I very rarely run across a post the does not include links from which they argue or comment on. Blogs are not the place to find source-based information, although it has increasingly become better at this journalistic role. It is the blogger's responsibility only to quote (within reason), cite or reference these sources. It is getting increasingly easy to access these with the simple act of opening another window on your computer. If a reader feels slighted by a lack of knowledge or access to these sources, they have a lot of work to do. Posts characterized as patronizing would not respond to requests or questions about its content, irresponsible to the trustworthiness of the site. I have not come across any blogger who brushed aside any question I have had. It certainly wasn't done here and I don't see the evidence that you make this claim on.
In respect, recently the financial crisis made me often feel like an ignoramus; I knew I was frightfully ill-prepared to understand the situation. Professional-level, economic knowledge, which would have been drudgery for me to access and why I was clueless in the first place, was freely exchanged in these posts. From TPM and other sites, I got access to information and ideas from the basics (some of which I was embarrassed not to know) to concepts which I still don't care to take the time to understand.
I don't know how to argue your claim that TPM doesn't take a position on anything other than by citing the entire blog. The Regular, Reader and Special Guest bloggers take a stand every time they post and because of its format they have to argue for them. Some might say that the collection of www bloggers, TPM et al, are too many positions flying around. That is the nature and consequence of the web; original brilliancy in the same company of the banal, to the moronic, to the malevolent. I am assuming that you don't see TPM as a site that offers ideas that are ideologically polemic. A good thing too; in the extreme fringes, one percent of the ideas might be brilliant with the others measured as moronic weighted towards malevolent.
October 21, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Biggest surprise of this campaign: Campbell Brown emerging as a voice of reason.
Never saw that coming.
October 21, 2008 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink