OK, thanks, I'll look into that.

Posted at September 22, 2007 9:00 AM in response to The Patterns Underlying Conservative Failures

This is a great discussion, and I'm really struck by the serendipity of its appearance in the same month that I web-posted my own article, "Why Conservatives are Always Wrong" (http://conservativesarealwayswrong.googlepages.com/), which I think is broadly similar in spirit to Greg Anrig's book. I'm hoping that what's happening here is a broad, growing recognition that conservatism has failed and will continue to fail. Progressives badly need to recover their self-confidence and stop falling for the right's arrogance and triumphalism, and I salute Greg for his efforts to help jog them out of their stupor.

Posted at September 22, 2007 1:31 AM in response to The Patterns Underlying Conservative Failures

To abide by those [traditional conservative] principles would have required sustaining and building on established and largely successful government activities. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights legislation, environmental regulations, food and drug oversight, anti-trust laws, transportation safety rules, and other public protections have demonstrably improved conditions in the United States.

This sounds like a terrific book, similar in spirit to my own recent writing on "Why Conservatives are Always Wrong" (http://conservativesarealwayswrong.googlepages.com/) but more specific as to particular policy debates of the recent past. But I'm not sure -- and granted, I haven't read the book's full explication -- about the statement I just quoted. Sure, in defending the status quo, conservatism is sticking up for the progressive successes of the past that brought us to this point and made it the status quo. That's a dynamic my article discusses too. The problem is, conservatives can't openly embrace the progressivism of the recent past, at least, without becoming functionally progressives themselves. Some will go ahead and do so, thereby decamping from conservatism, while others will bear down and demand ever-stricter fealty to received conservative doctrine.

I expect that's why we saw the Goldwater movement rise up in the midst of Eisenhower Republicanism (and in direct opposition to Rockefeller's). To the Goldwaterites -- and their successor ideologues today -- the moderates who try to "build on" Social Security, civil rights, environmental legislation, etc., aren't really conservative, and eventually they'll get hounded out of the Republican Party once the true believers succeed at taking it over. And thus does conservatism keeps re-defining itself precisely as the opponents of success and advocates of failure.

Posted at September 18, 2007 7:32 AM in response to Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing

Of course there are racists elsewhere than in the South. There are racists, Lord knows, in Canada, Germany and other social-democratic countries too, for that matter. The difference is that they don't have a huge regional base that gives them critical mass in their nations' politics. They don't dominate the national governments in those countries. In the US, it's the existence of the South that empowers all the other movement conservatives around the country, who otherwise would be a scattered rump.

Someone above mentioned the Willie Horton ad and pointed out that it wasn't just aimed at Southerners. Right, but it was aimed at a national political culture in which enough voters could be expected to respond to such an appeal. Without the South, there would still be some such voters, but not enough to change the whole character of politics and thus make the Willie Horton approach worthwhile.

Here's a more recent example: Without South Carolina, John McCain probably wins the Republican nomination in 2000 and almost certainly (if he wins the election) runs a more moderate administration than Bush has done. And what saved Bush in S.C. after he'd been clobbered by 20 points in New Hampshire? Push-polls and Rove-managed whispering campaigns about McCain's adoption of a mixed-race baby. Wouldn't have been tried in a different region or country and wouldn't have worked if it had been.

Posted at September 11, 2007 11:53 AM in response to Crank Politics

I completely agree, as I've been saying on comment boards on other sites, that the basic problem is the South. If you take away the states of the Old Confederacy, American party / electoral politics would look basically like Canada's or Western Europe's -- especially if you factor out the distorting effect that Southern conservatism has on the national political discussion generally.

The South itself recognized that it was essentially a different country, and it tried to go its own way. It wasn't allowed to. In short, I blame Lincoln.

But what's done is done. For the future, two things are important about movement conservatism: It's not serious about its own principles, and it's going to be proven wrong for the same reason that conservative ideas (including Southern conservatism's signature idea, Jim Crow) have always been proven wrong and eventually discarded. These are matters I discuss in more detail here:

http://conservativesarealwayswrong.googlepages.com/

Posted at September 11, 2007 7:32 AM in response to Crank Politics