UPDATE: So this was a stupid idea. Obviously I've left myself open to criticism since I admit outright that I haven't read the book. Also, calling this critique "definitive" was supposed to be a joke, obviously not a very good one. So, if anyone wants to comment on the specific points below, be my guest. Why I wanted to get this out of my system and make it public is for me to figure out.

That is, without having read it myself cover to cover. Despite this, enough clips, interviews, and reviews have been published to examine the major flaws of Jonah Goldberg's revisionist history. Some have asked why bother engaging such silly arguments in the first place. I think that's valid, so let me explain why. I don't personally take offense, as a liberal, to being called a fascist. That's Goldberg's reason for writing his book. I think fascism is an endlessly fascinating topic in political history precisely because of its novelty--nothing like fascism existed before the 20th century or after it with the same potency. To see fascism treated so cavalierly to score cheap political points while filling Goldberg's coffers disturbs me. After all, Goldberg and I agree on one thing: fascism is a bad thing. We ought to take proper measures to avoid its return as a viable political option. But Goldberg isn't interested in that; in fact, he's arguing that today's liberals are fascism's intellectual heirs! And doesn't that suggest we are as close to fascism now as we were in fascism's heyday? I can't shake the sense that Goldberg's frequent complaints that his critics don't understand or haven't completely read his book are really just a cop-out. After all, what book review refutes a book page by page, claim by claim? Often book reviewers will admit to having skimmed or selectively read the work they are supposed to review. No one is going to refute the innumerable errors of fact and reasoning in Liberal Fascism, I reckon, so why not point to the obvious failures of the book which can be gleaned from passages, interviews, reviews and other secondary sources that reveal the nature of the work? That said, there are three major errors I have observed, and one minor worth discussing. I do intend to look at the book in the near future, as I will have access to a review copy shortly, and I promise to correct any errors I make here.

A minor criticism of Liberal Fascism, then, is that it doesn't take its subject seriously, despite the author's entreaties to the contrary. And truth be told, many of the criticisms made against LF are minor ones; arguments that work against it on a meta-level, such as against the author personally. There are, however, major and fatal objections one can make against the book's central contentions, the most glaring of which is that it doesn't defend a thesis (see point 1). These major objections to Liberal Fascism serve to support the minor critiques, but without further ado, the major flaws.

Point 1: Liberal Fascism does not have a thesis because it does not take seriously the implications of its evidence

In a recent interview, Goldberg described the implications of his book thusly:

No, no. I mean, I try to reject that kind of thing ... I don't believe that liberals are Nazis; I believe that if Nazism came to the United States it is entirely possible that liberals would be at the forefront of the battle to stop it. So would conservatives. I'm not trying to do any argument ad Hitlerum in this book.

But what I am trying to do, at least in the chapter that you're talking about, is show how -- [take] Robert Proctor, who wrote an award-winning, widely esteemed book called "The Nazi War on Cancer." He points out that this organic food movement, the whole-grain bread operation, the war on cancer, the war on smoking, that these things were as fascist as death camps and yellow stars. They were as central to the ideology of Nazism as the extermination of the Jews. Now, that is not the same thing. And I want to be really clear about this: That is not the same thing as saying that banning smoking is as morally disgusting and reprehensible as trying to wipe out the Jewish people. You can say that something is as much part and parcel of an ideology and not say that it is as evil.

So, if smoking bans, organic and vegetarian diets, etc. are merely similarities between liberals and Nazis, then why bring them up as examples? Early in our education we all learned how to write a simple argumentative essay. The format went something like this: Introduction, thesis, evidence (three paragraphs minimum), and conclusion. Goldberg presents what appears to be evidence--similarities between historical fascists and liberal fascists--and then tells us that no, that doesn't mean liberals are Nazis. This pattern occurs throughout the book. Eventually we have to ask, what argument is Goldberg making? What is his thesis? We have to assume, given that the title of his book has always been--changing sub-titles notwithstanding--Liberal Fascism, that he is arguing that liberals are fascists, or more precisely, to quote him, that liberals are the intellectual heirs of fascism. Ergo, shouldn't we regard action by historical fascists as evidence that the same action on behalf of liberals is evidence of their fascist tendencies? No, Goldberg says, they are not morally equivalent. So again we must ask, what's the point of bringing these things up? What's the thesis? And without a strong thesis, Liberal Fascism is not an argument; it is a compendium of similarities that lead to an obvious conclusion--liberals are fascists--and then pulls the rug out from under us by telling us that no, liberals are not actually fascists. At the most elementary level of argument, at the highest level of conceptualization, LF is incoherent. It does not wish to strongly defend what should be its thesis, and that is fatal.

Point 2: Liberal Fascism actually criticizes collective totalitarianism and does not provide a satisfying definition of fascism qua fascism

The second major conceptual error LF makes is that it argues against liberalism qua fascism by criticizing its tendency towards socialism, collectivism, totalitarianism and big brother, big government welfare. I have repeatedly pointed out that fascism is a style of totalitarianism, and if Jonah Goldberg had written a book entitled Liberal Totalitarianism, my only critique would be that it is derivative (see point 4). However, Goldberg--no doubt for polemical reasons--chose to include the f-word and thus be "provocative," enhancing his sales numbers and ensuring a high ranking on Amazon.com and hopefully, he pines, on the New York Times best-seller list. Nevertheless, Goldberg's inability to look at fascism as a phenomenon unto itself or as a manifestation of totalitarianism seriously cripples his argument. One review of LF noted this analytical error:

Indeed, Goldberg even makes some use of Orwell, noting that the author of 1984 once dismissed the misuse of "fascism" as meaning "something not desirable." Of course, Orwell was railing against the loss of the word's meaning, while Goldberg, conversely, revels in it -- he refers to Orwell's critique as his "definition of fascism."

And then Goldberg proceeds to define everything that he himself considers undesirable as "fascist." This is just about everything even remotely and vaguely thought of as "liberal": vegetarianism, Social Security, multiculturalism, the "war on poverty," "the politics of meaning." The figures he labels as fascist range from Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson and Hillary Clinton. Goldberg's primary achievement is to rob the word of all meaning -- Newspeak incarnate.

Goldberg would be on more solid ground if he had simply provided an exhaustive definition of fascism. Instead he has defined it, as the review notes, as simply all that he (and contemporary American conservatism) disagrees with. I have argued before that sloppy, self-serving definitions of loaded political terms such as fascism only illustrate that the author is tailoring his definitions to conform to his conclusions. But that does not mean that one cannot generate their own definition of fascism--it just needs to be more thorough. Goldberg has failed to do this not only because it would undermine his argument, but also because it doesn't even fit his argument! He isn't, essentially, arguing against fascism as a specific political movement, he is simply adopting the term because it offends--the very reason he supposedly set out to write his revisionist history in the first place! And worse, his arguments don't even seriously link liberalism to fascism, they link liberalism to totalitarianism. But Goldberg's analysis is only skin-deep. He needs the fascist moniker precisely because his argument is not original (see point 4).

Point 3: Liberal Fascism purposely ignores counterfactual evidence, particularly that the main feature of fascism is its illiberalism

Many reviewers of Liberal Fascism have pointed out that Goldberg is not a trained historian and that that disqualifies him from doing serious historical revisionism. I agree to a point, but arguments should be based on the merits, not pedigree. Sadly, LF fails this basic test as well. It is strikingly obvious to even the most casual student of fascism that Goldberg has consciously (or unconsciously) ignored all previous research into the phenomenon in order to argue instead for a pet thesis (and even then, not forcefully--see point 1). There is a reason, after all, why gallons of ink have been spilled in the 80+ years since fascism became a recognizable political movement--it defied all previously known forms of political organization. It was and remains an entirely novel political movement. Goldberg does not reference this copious body of work that has endeavored to understand the fascist phenomenon. Rather, we are expected to yield to Goldberg's supposedly brilliant insight that, despite all that has been written to the contrary, fascism is really a product of liberalism. In actuality we are yielding to Goldberg's intellectual laziness. Does he seriously engage the decades of analysis that tell us fascism is antithetical to liberalism? No. Instead he reminds us that the professional historian's obvious Marxist bias has tainted all previous research into the phenomenon:

There are a lot of historians who get fascism basically right. There are a lot of historians who don't. I think the Marxists have been part and parcel of a basic propaganda campaign for a very long time, but there are plenty of historians who understand what fascism was and are actually quite honest about it.

To sort of start the story, the reason why we see fascism as a thing of the right is because fascism was originally a form of right-wing socialism. Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

And this is where the argument about Goldberg's credentials becomes relevant. To say Mussolini was a lifelong socialist ignores fascism as a phenomenon unto itself. And if fascism is really just an epiphenomenal form of socialism, then why not write a book called Liberal Socialism? To reiterate point 1, why is fascism even relevant? What is Goldberg's argument? Add to this his jaw-dropping claim that "the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I" and the relevance of Goldberg's scholarship becomes glaring. The very term "fascism" was coined by Mussolini! It was derived from the ancient Roman fasces, in a throwback to revitalizing the glory of ancient Rome. Does Goldberg even know what he's talking about? Does he even know the basic history of fascist Italy? In another part of the same interview, this telling exchange occurred:

You've talked about Mussolini remaining on the left and remaining a socialist, and in your book you've got a lot of quotes from the 1920s about that, but I'm wondering -- how does that fit in with what he wrote and said later, especially "The Doctrine of Fascism" in 1932?

I'd need to know specifically what he wrote in "The Doctrine of Fascism." It's been about three years since I've read it.

If Goldberg were a historian, he could never get Liberal Fascism past a peer review. The standards for publishing scholarly work are very high. It is not enough to have a new argument; it must also surpass or enhance all conventional wisdom in the field. But Goldberg is not an academic. He is a political writer who has made a novel argument without considering the body of evidence that argues against his thesis (if he even has one--another prerequisite for scholarly work). It isn't hyperbolic to say that this is a fatal flaw: by ignoring the major counterfactual to his thesis, namely that fascism has historically and unanimously been understood as antithetical to liberalism, he undermines his own thesis--that fascism is exclusively a product of the political left. I am forced to use the term "exclusively" because Goldberg does not provide examples of historical fascisms that originate on the historical right. If he did, he wouldn't have an argument; his book would merely be a series of coincidences pointing toward no conclusion. By ignoring this very important counterfactual Goldberg has rendered the meaning of "fascism" relative. Now, anything can be considered fascist under Goldberg's criteria. This is particularly ironic given that Goldberg's motivation for writing his book was to counter the ugly rhetoric from some on the left over the years to paint anyone on the right as a "fascist." All Goldberg has done is replace the hyperbole and inaccuracy of calling a conservative a fascist with calling a liberal a fascist. This is barely above a schoolyard taunt. It's embarrassing.

Point 4: Liberal Fascism is not a novel argument

This is a minor criticism of Liberal Fascism, but a telling one. As I discussed above in point 2, the bulk of Goldberg's argument is against the totalitarian tendencies of liberalism; mislabeling this as "fascism" just makes his book "edgy." But the argument that political liberalism leads to totalitarianism has not only been made decades before Goldberg was born, but has been made repeatedly, more distinctly, and far better than he could ever dream. Since Goldberg is a figure in the contemporary conservative movement with obvious intellectual pretensions, I have to assume that he is familiar with the basic contours and genealogy of the movement that has benefited his career. But to regard Liberal Fascism with even the most basic familiarity of the conservative intellectual movement is to witness old arguments resurrected in an increasingly less convincing fashion. I won't attempt to date the first conservative critique of big government liberalism, but surely a few crucial names in the postwar (and earlier) come up: Albert Jay Nock, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, and of course, Friedrich Hayek. These thinkers contemplated the rise of the welfare state at the cost of the individual. Decreasing autonomy and control over one's life--not to mention the dehumanization--coming at the expense of bureaucracies deciding how societies should organize themselves. And certainly in the context of the Second World War, one could hardly dismiss such criticisms. The United States witnessed a dramatic rise in the ubiquity, power and influence of the federal government between the dawn of the 20th century and the end of WWII. Paramount on the minds of these thinkers was whether the centralized state would continue after the war effort had wound down. Hayek in particular articulated the economic costs of this centralization, and made the most explicit link between economic freedom and political freedom. Indeed, while Hayek considered himself a classical liberal rather than a "libertarian," he nevertheless distinguished himself from "conservatism," which he considered so fundamentally opposed to change that its intransigence endeared it more to the socialists than to the liberals.

The Road to Serfdom, Hayek's most famous work, made the observation that the collectivism of Stalin's regime and Hitler's were flip sides of the same coin. Later political analysts, notably Hannah Arendt and George Orwell, would note the basic similarities between National Socialism and Stalinism. The difference lay only in their official propaganda. So whereas the fascism of the Nazis emphasized ultra-nationalist, authoritarian father/hero worship--with the unmistakable stench of racial superiority pervading the entire regime--the Soviets only varied in who their false idols were. Lenin lay in state in Kremlin for decades while statuary, art and literature (propaganda) romanticizing Stalin outpaced the deceased Bolshevik founder. Purity became just as obsessive, while a class of people--the proletariat--were elevated above all else and a pagan religion--Marxism--excommunicated traditional religious authority, often violently. Antisemitism was rife after the Bolshevik revolution as all potential contenders--or threats--to power were literally purged. Political enemies of both the Nazis and Soviets were exterminated, and both were guilty of nothing. The horror of these two regimes, where the state was omnipresent and supreme, necessitated a new label. It wasn't merely Nazism or fascism or socialism or Stalinism--it was totalitarianism. And all the flavors were just that--flavors. The only meaningful difference, if meaningful at all, was that one was tinged with the political right, and the other was tinged with the political left. But both were far from the liberalism or conservatism that preceded them.

Liberal Fascism ignores everything I have just laid out. Goldberg chooses a couple regimes, the Nazis and the Italian fascists, finds a few substantive and many superficial similarities, and draws a broad conclusion--fascism originated from ideas on the political left. Except that he is really talking about the broader phenomenon of totalitarianism. The only reason totalitarianism and fascism are both antithetical to liberalism is because they are the same phenomenon, keeping in mind that fascism is just a totalitarian style, just as Stalinism was. But these points have all been made before. Goldberg's argument is not novel, it is incomplete. It chooses bits of historical fact that support his weak thesis and ignores everything else. It is quite literally not a work of history, it is a compendium of events which form a pattern that only Goldberg can see. Goldberg has been mocked for once uttering that Liberal Fascism is "a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care." The mockery is warranted. Goldberg's argument is not serious, it is not thoughtful, and most of all, it has been made with greater detail and care than his book could ever hope to achieve. For him to suggest otherwise can only suggest unbelievable ego or breathtaking ignorance.

Postscript

In the end, the worst thing about Liberal Fascism is not that it offends, but that it does not understand what contemporary liberalism is all about. Nor does Goldberg make any attempt to do so. The draconian measures taken by Wilson during WWI, for instance, are cited by Goldberg as an example of the essentially authoritarian--and hence, fascist--nature of liberalism. Why, then, are such incidents reported by men of the left like Howard Zinn? Zinn's antipathy to authoritarianism is palpable, and yet he's an old-school communist (i.e. a collectivist fascist, by Goldberg's criteria). Goldberg can't account for anecdotes like this because he is not engaged in serious historical inquiry. He just wants examples that support his thesis--but not too much! After all, he doesn't want anyone accusing him of accusing liberals of being Nazis! Wherever would they get that idea?

So not only do I write all this to preserve the integrity of terms like fascism, but also to preserve the integrity of liberalism. In the 75 years since Roosevelt co-opted the term to describe his new political coalition, liberalism has been under assault from opponents of modernity, and opponents of the centralized state. The question regarding the latter is whether our constitutional arrangements and basic American political conceptions are powerful enough to resist the totalitarian temptation. I believe that they are. But the threat always looms. That threat is illiberalism, and illiberalism has manifested itself most dangerously as fascism. Liberals like Orwell--who were far closer to socialism than any relevant liberal in America today--were willing to fight and die for what they believed was a liberal order; they fought specifically against fascists. These days, there really aren't any fascists around who pose a great threat to us. It's true that the authoritarian tendencies of the Bush administration suggest a lawlessness whose next stop is fascism but we're hardly there yet--we're not even close in my opinion. And despite the specific abuses of civil liberties and all of the general abuses since the advent of the "war on terror," Bush will not be president after January 2009. If we were truly living under a fascist regime, we wouldn't even have elections anymore.

Yet the term "fascism" has been abused for so long that some effort must be made to rescue it from the relativist ghetto it now inhabits. Jonah Goldberg imagines that he is doing just this, but as I've demonstrated above, he's only done it to score points for his team. Perhaps it is because he senses that his own political movement--which is authoritarian but hardly fascist--is entering a long twilight. Perhaps it is because he cynically wants to cash in one last time before the mockery becomes all consuming. Perhaps he sincerely wants to defend conservatives from the verbal assaults of ignorant leftists. Who knows. But if Goldberg was serious about telling the truth about fascism, he wouldn't have written Liberal Fascism--he would have argued against it.

I'm not blind to the fact that in this final sprint before tonight's Iowa caucus Barack Obama has gone negative on his Democratic opponents in a way certain to rankle the sensitive nerves of progressives--by attacking them from the right, with right-wing rhetoric. Ironically, this puts Obama, not Clinton, in the position of being the calculating, triangulating centrist--the very feature that is most unappealing about the Clinton political machine. I certainly agree, and I'm not sure why Obama has decided to take this tack. The most plausible theory is the perennial siren song of the so-called "independent voter," whose presence is undeniably filling the ranks of Obama's supporters. Every four years we hear about these voters being "decisive" in a presidential election--and 2008 is no different. Take this, for example:

There is a spectre haunting this year's presidential campaign: the independent voter. Buoyed by the Des Moines Register poll predicting that participation by independents could reach as high as 40% in the upcoming Democratic caucus, Barack Obama is now counting on the independent vote to carry him to victory in Iowa and New Hampshire. And John McCain is hoping that independents will make the difference for him in New Hampshire, as they did in 2000 against George Bush.

John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, the authors of this piece, are heavily invested in understanding where independent voters lean. They wrote a book on the subject that, in light on 9/11 and the Bush boom, looked ridiculous, but from our current vantage point looks prescient. They were right about the trends; those trends were just upset by events outside the normal flow of politics. Indeed, you could argue--and I would agree--that the real aberration was the 2000 election itself, which interrupted a set of shifting demographic trends that all pointed to a long-term democratic majority, at least along the lines of Judis and Teixeira's definition. And that definition depends on a certain set of voters receptive to a post-industrial Democratic pitch. Beyond the obvious fact that these voters don't identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats, what can we say about them? Judis and Teixeira have this to say:

What all these independents share, however, is skepticism about the two party system itself. Many of them voted for Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. They see Washington as dominated by "special interests," and unlike Democrats or Republicans, see the political parties themselves as "special interests." The parties are part of the problem. They look, therefore, to politicians like Gary Hart in 1984 or McCain in 2000 who appear to position themselves above the parties - to campaign as candidates of the "national interest" and to condemn their own party as captive of "special interests." In this year's election, independents who vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses will be looking primarily to Barack Obama, who is running a Hart-like campaign; Republicans will be looking to McCain, who after his early slump, has readopted the language of 2000, and to Texas congressman Ron Paul.

To pull all the threads together, Obama's unity pitch appears to be nothing more than a way of attracting independent, undecided--whatever--voters to his camp. I don't think anyone can realistically and comprehensively understand the specific reasons why these voters are doing so, but is it really plausible to argue that they all are turned off by the two-party system and are expressing that ennui by voting for...a representative of that two-party system? If that is true then it suggests that Obama's campaign and political style are somehow un-Democratic, or at least as far as the caricature of the Democratic party goes. And this, I think, is not just Obama's appeal, but also a clever strategy on his part to create widespread appeal for a a frankly progressive policy agenda. Let's outsource this to Yglesias for a moment:

I think you have to agree that if he really does manage to use this kind of rhetoric to mobilize an unprecedented number of independents to go caucus for the first time on behalf of a candidate who was right about Iraq from the beginning, backs ambitious new programs on climate change and media reform, big new regulations on health insurance companies and new subsidies to people who have trouble paying for insurance, etc., etc., etc. that that'll be a pretty impressive achievement.

It's always worth recalling that George W. Bush talked the talk about repudiating the harshness of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. That duped the brain-dead press and they, in turn, helped dupe a substantial element of the public. But the policy agenda from Bush was always very right-wing, just as Obama's platform is quite progressive.

There's the rub. Substantively, it doesn't matter what Obama says to get the votes--he's honest about the policy he would enact as president, and that policy set is progressive. He's not saying he's a "uniter, not a divider," or a "compassionate conservative." He's saying that he can unite people across the ideological spectrum, which is dubious, but then advancing a solidly progressive--some would say divisive--policy platform. I can't believe that this is somehow an accident, nor can I say that this was Obama's plan all the way back at the 2004 DNC speech that made him famous. I've long maintained that Obama might be egotistical enough (and who aspiring to the presidency isn't?) to believe his own rhetoric, but his more tactical side knows he can use this language to win. Especially when you factor in the brain-dead press-friendly appeal, I think it's clear that Obama is running a campaign that truly does attempt to appeal to all people, by appealing to their own desires most directly. Even his appeals to groups more at home on the GOP side have been so infrequent as to amplify the "what the hell is Obama doing?" question. It's almost as if he's testing how far his appeal goes, including those groups who are in all likelihood preternaturally opposed to him.

This is why I've had a hard time abandoning Obama despite his missteps. Every candidate, Republican or Democrat, has their baggage. That's not the point. The point is that we need to evaluate that baggage and rank it: is Obama's Broder-esque unity rhetoric worse than Clinton's questionable foreign policy ideas? Is it worse than John Edwards' decision to accept public financing should he be the nominee, thereby leaving him vulnerable to months of better-funded GOP assault? The answer is no. For me, those are critical weaknesses, and despite all that I've written here about the vacuousness of Broder-esque unity language, that is only pertinent to political journalists, not candidates. That is the critical difference. And in an election year where the Democratic frontrunners are all in their own ways excellent, I can afford to make my decision based on things as substance-free as rhetoric. Along that dimension, Obama has always been the best, and if his strategy pays off, he will have deserved to win, and will be the most formidable nominee the Democrats have put up at least since B. Clinton, if not deeper in the past.

I feel compelled to comment over this recent repulsive display from the right-wing media over the Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" comment and the SCHIP veto but I hardly know where to begin. These people are just about the most despicable, self-serving and ugly Americans I have ever seen, and there appears to be absolutely no line they won't cross in service of their agenda, which seems to be nothing more than the total demonization of anyone, anywhere who disagrees with them. Here's a video clip of VoteVets.org Vice President Brandon Friedman reading some hate mail his organization has received from Limbaugh's listeners. You can read some of them here, if you wish. The common theme is that a phony soldier is one who does not unquestioningly and uncritically submit to an authority figure's interpretation of the war, whether it is Rush LImbaugh, George Bush or General Petraeus. Any deviation from the authority's interpretation sends their followers, as near as I can tell from these examples, into a complete frenzy. They are livid. Incoherent. Violent. I don't know what psychological impulse is behind this behavior, or what transpired over the course of their lives to make them so intolerant of reasoned dissent, but one thing is clear: they are lost. They are beyond persuasion, beyond spirited debate, beyond even empathy. Deviation from their belief system triggers in them an instinctual need to attack and to destroy their perceived enemies.

I don't intend this to be a cheap exercise in pop psycho-babble, and generally speaking, I find such explanations of what's called authoritarian behavior to be unsatisfying. Yet we must acknowledge that something is motivating these people, and it is something deeply irrational. That, as near as I can tell, puts us squarely in psychological territory and while I am unqualified to make up a profile of this personality type, I offer my observations as a way of setting the boundaries of the discussion. Ultimately, however, I don't wish to focus on the followers but their leaders, the authority figures they rely on and rally around. In the case of someone like Rush Limbaugh, who has been at this game for close to 20 years, it's clear to me that he has found a formula for success that has since been copied by by every one of his imitators. One can't say for certain whether Limbaugh actually believes his own fantasies or whether he is simply an immoral self-serving cynic, but I'm inclined to lean towards the former interpretation. Certainly he relishes in his own success and power and that propels him but it also, I suspect, numbs him to his own conscience, which somewhere in his blackened heart tells him that he is exploiting people for profit; both his listeners who hang on his every word like revealed truth and the subjects of his tirades. Obviously that voice is all but silent in Limbaugh who I suspect takes his own success as a validation of his extreme beliefs. After all, it isn't the type of work you do that counts, it's whether you're successful at it or not. Losers vote for Democrats. And he's a winner, even though his trade is nothing more than propaganda.

For the hardcore right-wing movement conservatives I'm looking at here, the military, like the media, is simply a tool to be manipulated. If soldiers voice concern over their mission, they're traitors. If they question the war as veterans, they're phony. Most of the time, the mainstream news media is little more than an American Pravda for the right-wing, indistinguishable from communist propaganda. Except when they help the conservative cause. I don't recall hearing anyone complaining about "liberal bias" when virtually every significant news source in the country uncritically supported George Bush's ill-conceived war of choice in Iraq. They were towing the line and hence not the enemy but enablers. Of course, now that they are a bit more critical, their status has been returned to that of socialist liberal traitors who enable the eventual takeover of America by the Islamofascist hordes massing around Iran's revolutionary regime. Or something like that. But the key dynamic should not be forgotten: right-wing agrees with news story = good, right-wing disagrees with news story = traitors. Theirs is not a coherent critique of the news media but rather an unspoken acknowledgment that the news media are merely tools for the movement that can fall in and out of favor in an instant, at which point the narrative of the embattled and underrepresented conservative alternative media comes in.

Every conservative media figure plays this game; no matter the actual circumstances of the media environment, conservatives always portray themselves as the victims of a liberal establishment that shuts out alternative views and stifles honest debate. And although they're all guilty of this, I think Michelle Malkin stands out. For one thing, Malkin represents the face of modern, disingenuous conservatism. She, first of all, is a woman, and a woman of foreign ancestry. She is young and, dare I say, hip. She's an internet personality who in addition to her personal blog, has taken to "vlogging" and other collaborative internet media ventures. She also, as a modern pundit, cross-pollinates in the publishing and cable news media environments which gives her additional gravitas. My argument is that all this is simply a smokescreen. Success for her, unlike Limbaugh, is not a matter of ideological self-validation. It is rather a way of telling herself that she is mainstream and a serious journalist when in fact she is a peddler of hated and thuggery. She can deny all this by an avalanche of heavily-hyperlinked blog posts to obscure debate over small factual matters which, when added up, amount to her being little more than a serial liar. No, she claims, I am a journalist, and then she turns the tables by suggesting her critics are stalking her, rather than the other way around.

Because of this heavy obfuscation, what Malkin does and the tactics she employs become lost to all but those who are well-entrenched in daily (these days, hourly) political news from the New York Times to the lowliest blogs. Thus, while efforts to call her out on her lies and tactics are noble and the correct response, it is doubtful she would consent, given the style of politics she employs, which would amount to accusations of being "unfairly" treated and undoubtedly a reference to one of her dense blog posts so we can restart the debate all over again. It seems, frankly, futile to engage such a person on the merits because she isn't playing that game. In fact, Ezra Klein, the blogger who called Malkin out, should realize this. He himself wrote the day before

This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience -- the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much -- in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.

And that is why I find it so difficult to write about this subject--it isn't about politics. It defies the tools of cool, rational and informed analysis. The Malkins and Limbaughs may ultimately help a political cause by being the mercenaries who profit off the conflict, but they are essentially apolitical. What drives them is more than money and power and ego: it is an identity. An identity of being both within--in the conservative populist fashion--the group being wronged from without while at the same time being a leader charging forth, sword in hand, moral certainly never in question. A Kossack echoes this notion:

It's long past time for people to stop treating Fox-style, Malkin-style, Limbaugh-style conservatism as merely a "political" phenomenon. It may once have been, but it isn't now. As of this millennium, it's nothing but a hate movement with neckties. Protofascism with bright, patriotic logos. Stop treating it with anything but revulsion and disdain. Stop pretending for even a bare moment that they are anything more than thugs (emphasis in original).

That, I think, should be the proper response from anyone who considers him or herself as part of the Left. If a part of our identity is to cherish the rule of law above vigilantism, then we should be labeling the Malkins and Limbaughs and countless others as thugs. And the bit about neckties is simply an acknowledgment of how mainstreamed these views have become. Once-respectable news organizations now regularly lower themselves into the sewer for "insight" from these professionalized thugs. How else to explain the bizarre continuing presence of Glenn Beck, whose shtick appears to be that of an ignorant bigot supposedly echoing the sentiments of the everyman. I don't know what is more insulting: the spectacle of a professional xenophobe posing as a newsman or the fact that the people who hired Beck think that he really does represent average Americans (his rating suggest otherwise). Isn't the news supposed to inform us? Dare I say, enlighten us? This is what CNN considers informative?

Iran has long been the puppet master in the Middle East. You don't have to take my word for it. Just watch any episode of Law & Order. Use the thinking, you know, that helps them solve all the tough cases. Iran has the means, the motive, and the opportunity to try and destroy our American way of life by controlling the Middle East.

Since 1979, they have been orchestrating a coalition to wipe us off the face of the Earth and establish their psychotic extremist regime. It is time for us to stop sending diplomats to reason with warrior chess players.

And it goes on like that. These are paranoid delusions or cheap fear-mongering for ratings. Either way, they are not befitting of an organization purporting itself to be the "Most Trusted Name in News." And we certainly don't need anymore racial profiling from Beck when all Americans should be gravely concerned about the Bush administration's intentions towards Iran (to say nothing of the broader Middle East).

It is irresponsible to treat Limbaugh, Malkin and Beck with any degree of professional respect. Their views are radical and extreme, their followers are comprised of unstable loons, and their common theme is premised on treating America as some sort of battleground for ideological, racial and political purity--a minority view, I might add, and not even close to achieving any sort of consensus in this country. Iraq and SCHIP (I'm using it here as a proxy for health care) are the most important issues to Americans. And in each case a clear majority, backed for the most part by the Democratic party, desires change. Substantive change. And in each case a vocal minority, whether filibustering Republicans in the Senate or conservative media activists, are hysterically waging war against that majority opinion using every despicable weapon at their command. Struggling families, infirmed children, war veterans--none of these are too sacred for the rabid right-wing not to attack mercilessly. And this country needs to come to terms with that. Powerful people with audiences need to fearless denounce these thugs for who they are and shrug off any threats that result. The radicals need to be marginalized because their self-imposed alienation makes it impossible to reconcile them with the rest of the country whose political values actually cherish debate instead of mindless mob justice. Everyone cheers when the bully's bubble of authority is finally popped. That moment can't come soon enough.

This is a particularly strange poll question featured in the Times today. It asks, "If you had to choose, whom would you say you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" 68% chose "U.S. Military Commanders," 21% chose "Congress," 5% chose "The Bush Administration," and 3% chose "no one." It's not that I agree or disagree with these results. I just don't understand what the question implies. What does "successfully resolving the war" mean? Does it mean ending it? Does it mean winning it? What makes it successful? And why is trust an issue? We all know that the military is subservient to civilian leadership in our form of government, so in a sense, resolving the war is a political decision. It can be undertaken by either the president or congress. The military offers tactical information and advice but it cannot simply resolve the conflict even if it wanted to because it takes orders from the president.

Interestingly, the sidebar to the article contains other results from this poll. These questions ask pretty straightforward questions about how long we should stay, when we should leave, whether conditions will deteriorate further if we leave, etc. Those numbers actually tell us something about public sentiment. The Times even includes earlier poll results to show how opinion has shifted over time, especially with regards to the perceived success of the "surge." Yet the most meaningless of the poll questions is highlighted, presumably to further bolster the prestige of Gen. Petraeus, who is testifying before Congress today. That is pretty ironic, given that the article notes that

That is almost certainly why the White House has presented General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker as unbiased professionals, not Bush partisans. President Bush has said for years that decisions about force levels should be left to military commanders, although the decision to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq this year and keep them there was not uniformly supported by military leaders. It was primarily made in the White House, and specifically by the president in his role as commander in chief.

If other words, we ought to be skeptical about Petraeus' testimony. This seems to be a case of the Times' right hand not knowing what its left hand is doing. Either that or they have an agenda. I lean towards the more mundane explanation: this was simply a bad editorial decision. And bad editorial decisions, as I've said time and again, lie at the heart of modern journalism's malaise.

Back in December I voiced concern that Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric occasionally makes him sound like the ideal Unity08 candidate. I've made clear on this blog that I support and like Obama but I don't want him to fall for the bipartisanship ruse which leads to Washington centrist consensus, something Obama himself has criticized. Today Max Sawicky at TPM Cafe voices similar concerns about Obama's unity message:

Of course big changes tend to get done on a bipartisan basis, and broader support is always worth pursuing. But the changes we need are not all the rage of the political center. Aside from Iraq, the question is how much daylight is there on the substance of policy between Rep. Ford and Senator Obama?

...

Too much pragmatism will keep the country stuck where it is now -- prone to precipitous military adventures, diddling with the health insurance industry, upholding homilies about personal responsibility in a labor market where work doesn't pay and individual financial risk worsens.

The feeling I get about Obama is that, free of ideological preconceptions, he thinks he can sit down with contending parties and make deals. When the desperately poor are on one side of the table, this is a praiseworthy endeavor. This is part of Obama's claim to fame, and deservedly so. The problem is that while most any deal you can get will make the poor better off, when it comes to the broad working class, or if you like, "middle class," this is an inadequate approach.

Now, I know that Barack Obama understands the dynamics at play here. He has remarked in the past that governing is easier for Republicans because they are not trying to create legislation that requires large, across-the-aisle coalition building, but rather just need that 51% to get their agenda across (can't find the link to this). I can only assume that he is frighteningly confident of his abilities to reach across party lines and build those coalitions on the basis of his own negotiating skills because the last feature I would ascribe to Republicans is compromise. Conservatism has become an ideology, and most Republicans are proud conservatives (i.e. identity politics). They will not willingly budge on any of their pet issues because they have already arrived at the solution for any given problem. I see no evidence that conservative Republicans possess the "prudence" and "prescription" that Burke spoke of, nor are they practical or pragmatic. They have their solutions, the conversation is over, and with power they will attempt to enact their solutions. How exactly Obama is to "reach out" to these people mystifies me.

It would be nice if we could just elect Republicans who were willing to listen and negotiate, but that's not who the GOP base elects. Democrats have a mirror-image problem: the party is catching up to the base. So while it seems inevitable that better Democrats (that is, more representative of their base) will be elected over the years, the GOP base will become more narrow and doctrinaire and orthodox which will, over time, cost them elections in all but the more gerrymandered districts. They will become, as Tom Schaller noted, a regional party.

I still think Obama has the right campaign style. After all, he is conspicuously trying to build a movement around him that creates the sense of "nonpartisanship" even though most of his ideas are clearly on the left/liberal/progressive side of the equation. I imagine that with the support a public majority Obama believes he will be able to put his ideas into action. And if 2008 is a landslide, he may just do that. But sooner or later he is going to have to clearly link his political successes with the Democratic party for only then will he be in a position to actually claim a popular mandate for the Party and put the opposition in the spotlight. I hope he realizes that negotiation is fine but if the GOP won't budge then they must be forced to accept the popular mandate. Obama's demonstrable political shrewdness to date suggests that he will be willing to take the gloves off if the occasion arises. Until then I think his message of unity is positive, good for the country and the prelude to a formidable primary battle for the Democratic nomination.

Its been a slow road but I've truly come to despise Rudy Giuliani. I mean it. Not just disagree with him or his policies but to find everything he represents to be utterly despicable. Here, the ghost-written Rudy Doctrine of Foreign Policy, is all you need to know about the man. His ignorance--still breathtaking even after the horrors of George W. Bush--is appalling. Yet his main selling point is that he has the experience necessary to guide us through these dangerous terrorist-infested waters due to being New York's mayor on 9/11. That's it. Here's the beginning of the Rudy Doctrine:

We are all members of the 9/11 generation.

The defining challenges of the twentieth century ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Full recognition of the first great challenge of the twenty-first century came with the attacks of September 11, 2001, even though Islamist terrorists had begun their assault on world order decades before. Confronted with an act of war on American soil, our old assumptions about conflict between nation-states fell away. Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy.

In other words, the World War IV thesis. This isn't surprising since the bloodthirsty senile lunatic Norman Podhoretz is advising him on foreign policy. How are we supposed to take seriously a foreign policy that assumes, from the beginning, that civilization itself is under attack from terrorism, as if such violent political action is an utterly unprecedented novelty in the history of the world? But then again I don't expect someone as dense as Rudy Giuliani to ever crack open a work of history. Here is the core of the policy:

The next U.S. president will face three key foreign policy challenges. First and foremost will be to set a course for victory in the terrorists' war on global order. The second will be to strengthen the international system that the terrorists seek to destroy. The third will be to extend the benefits of the international system in an ever-widening arc of security and stability across the globe. The most effective means for achieving these goals are building a stronger defense, developing a determined diplomacy, and expanding our economic and cultural influence. Using all three, the next president can build the foundations of a lasting, realistic peace. (my emphasis)

This sounds like typical foreign policy boilerplate that is big on goals, short on context. First of all, the idea that we're "at war" with terror. Why would it advantage us in the slightest to elevate terrorists to the status of nation-states by declaring war on them? Doesn't that legitimize their cause and make them the equal of United States? Furthermore, why lump all terrorists together? Obviously different terrorist organizations have different goals and agendas. Wouldn't be more productive for the United States to use the old divide and conquer technique? Giving terrorists who have no reason to work together a reason to work together actually creates truly "global" terrorism. This is like the GI Joe foreign policy creating Cobra to give it a raison d'etre. In short, Giuliani actually wants a unified terrorist front to confront, instead of the considerably more messy but less dangerous task of dealing with them separately.

The desire for a unified terrorist front also conflicts with his third foreign policy challenge. He's talking about nation-building here, and even refers to the creation of a "hybrid military-civilian organization" tasked with "building roads, sewers, and schools; advising on legal reform; and restoring local currencies." He continues: "The United States did similar work, and with great success, in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. But even with the rich civic traditions in these nations, the process took a number of years. We must learn from our past if we want to win the peace as well as the war. (my emphasis)" Here is a perfect example of Rudy's abuse of history. Reforming/rebuilding postwar Germany and Japan worked precisely because those states existed as liberal democracies before they started down the road to fascism and imperialism, respectively. For what remained of the civilian population of those nations there was a context to work within. Marshall Plan dollars fueled the exercise, but the people could envision the results of their labor because they had been there before. Presumably the nation-building Rudy is referring to would take place in states we would generally label "failed" or "backward." These places have known only colonialism, kleptocracy, authoritarianism and military dictatorship. Their best days were literally in the ancient past. So while I am sympathetic to the nation-building argument (specifically the idea of putting people to work on large public works projects to create class and nationalist solidarity) as a means for deterring potential terrorism, trying to simply copy the success of the Marshall Plan ignores why it was successful.

This leads, of course, to the role of international organizations in the process. It may be true that some terrorists wish to see the end of the international order. But they will never accomplish that. The international order--let's call it the globalized world--is a rather decentralized phenomenon. True, it is dominated by wealthy and powerful states who receive the lion's share of the system's largess, but it can only be disrupted, not destroyed. Only the states who benefit from and shape the system can destroy it through, not surprisingly, bad foreign and domestic policy. What is unclear in the entire article are the questions of the relative merits of soft vs. hard power and whether sovereign states have the right to act unilaterally or withing the framework of a larger international legal and political order. Since the article doesn't address these crucial questions, we are left with the vague suggestion that IOs are important but perhaps less so than shared defense pacts like NATO, which Giuliani seems eager to expand. I consider myself receptive to the idea that organizations like NATO are terrific at preventing states from warring with each other. But the focus of this article is not on war between states but war between states and terrorists. NATO wasn't designed to confront terrorism, it was designed to confront Soviet communism. It seems the IOs Rudy is actually arguing for are the ones he trashes, particularly the UN. And the UN, while far from perfect, is an ideal organizing vessel for the task of nation-building (noting of course that the very charter of the UN would need to be changed from promoting international peace between states to something more proactive). Rudy claims to be adhering to the realist school of international relations but the posture he asserts is highly neoconservative--e.g. "we have learned that evil must be confronted -- not appeased -- because only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace." Neoconservatism is the antithesis of Realism. It is guided by moral responsibility and strength projection. Realism is amoral--you deal with the bad actors to the best of your own interest. Rudy tries to combine the two and the results are incoherent.

Now if I may recuse myself from the confines of the polite discourse of Foreign Affairs and return to Giuliani himself. It is unclear whether this foreign policy statement is one that is written with conviction or simply for the purpose of fooling the foreign policy "community" into thinking he's a reasonable man. There are enough internal contradictions that sound reasonable enough on the surface to lead me to the latter interpretation. But on the other hand the willingness of the neoconservative mind to suppress cognitive dissonance and never assess reality realistically seems to be at play here as well. We know Rudy couldn't come up with this stuff himself, so the document appears to be little more than a cover letter for a national security post in a Giuliani administration (shudder). Thus it is a rhetorical exercise designed to demonstrate "serious" thinking in foreign policy that has zero bearing on the real world. It is, in short, a lie. This is not how Rudy intends to govern. He simply can't have both a robust international community bound by law, led by the United States and a unilateral World War IV eternal struggle against Islamofasicsm. The two are incompatible. And so he will have to choose. Suffice it to say, he already has. This is, in other words, Bush's "compassionate conservative" campaign. The only difference is that what Giuliani says on the campaign trail doesn't hide his true intentions. The real Giuliani is the one in this video. Electing Rudy Giuliani president would be--this is not hyperbole--a disaster for the United States. Worse than Bush. Further than Bush. More deranged. He must be confronted by an adversarial press and a skeptical public. He will wilt under that scrutiny, its just a matter of making the effort.

So conservative wunderkind Jonah Goldberg has refused to acknowledge any more criticism of his eternally-delayed "criticism" of liberalism, Liberal Fascism, until the book actually comes out. Fair enough. And as fun as it is to launch attacks at people like Goldberg, they're not meant to be substantive attacks--they're just meant to get under the skin of their recipient. And it is also true that I can't thoroughly criticize a book I haven't read, but I certainly can criticize its premises, which are pretty transparent.

First and most obvious is the title. How is Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton (now The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods) related to making a serious argument? Accusing someone of being a fascist is a pretty serious and specific charge. I have to assume, based on the book's title, that Goldberg has identified/discovered/made up a variety of fascism that is based on liberalism. I do not know if he is referring to Liberalism in the original sense or liberalism in its current American usage, but in either case "liberalism" is not remotely fascistic. Classical liberalism relies on individual liberty, free markets, and minimal government to organize a body politic. Does anyone associate those things with fascist governments? Hardly. And as for contemporary American liberalism, I think we must assume that Goldberg is relying upon the conservative cliche of big government Democrats. This assumed reliance on statism must be the "totalitarian temptation." And this is where the confusion begins. Goldberg is talking about two things: fascism and totalitarianism. The former is a specific form of government that relies on mass society demagoguery, propaganda and jingoism to practice what today we would call identity politics. The latter is a more generalized account of a state whose interests are inseparable from that of the government's. In this way both fascist and communist states can and have been, totalitarian. But just from the title of the book it is clear that Goldberg is using the left-wing example of totalitarianism to charge the American Left with being an example of the right-wing example of totalitarianism.

The way Goldberg would argue his way out of this is that I critically misunderstand the nature (and thus the history) of fascism. This is the second premise. The argument is that fascism originates on the left, not the right, and that is how liberal fascists are born. The evidence for this is that fascist movements were often the political voice for artists, bohemians, and all those who argued against the bourgeois liberal state of the 19th century who, despite their rationality and science, still let loose World War I. And when in power, fascists tailored industry to their needs--just like American liberals want to monopolize the economy today! As you can see, this line of argument is wholly dependent on being selective with the historical record. Yes, even Hitler was a failed art student. But critical is that fascism was a reaction against modernity, against liberalism, and against rationality. For the artists and bohemians it was a political response that was Romantic in nature. Another inconvenient fact is that once in power, fascist governments always turn against the communists and liberals--in that order. The communists, after all, were the major competitor of the fascists in the interwar years as an alternative to liberalism. Both relied upon demagoguery to make their appeals which were, incidentally, directed at the working classes. Both systems require mass support, so the fascists moved quickly to marginalize the opposition. On the communist side of the totalitarian coin, Stalin ran a counter-revolution that destroyed all internal opposition to his regime. Totalitarian states immediately and quickly move to liquefy internal opposition and rewrite history. That is how they maintain power.

This leads us to Goldberg's third premise, which is simply that I have his premises all wrong. He doesn't clarify, he just insists that I'll simply need to read his book, which he never forgets to remind us is very serious, thoughtful, careful and utterly novel. But this premise is wrong too. I noted that Goldberg is casual with the heavily loaded terms "totalitarianism" and "fascism" when using them to describe liberals. If Goldberg's insight is simply that these terms are synonymous, then that begs the question of the taxonomic place in history Goldberg reserves for Stalinism. Totalitarian or not? But if fascism is really a left-wing phenomenon, then does that mean there are no right-wing totalitarian movements? Goldberg's argument falls apart precisely because he insists on redefining the terms he uses to quite deliberately demonize liberals. Isn't that the point of the book after all? Goldberg isn't trying to split hairs, rather he is masquerading as a disinterested party who wishes to clarify our understanding of what liberalism represents. And to begin this discussion he throws out the term "liberal fascism." Since we're neck-deep in analogies here, let's just say that this is tantamount to beginning a discussion about Nazis by referring to them as monsters. The difference, of course, is that the Nazis were monsters and I'd be interested to see what evidence Goldberg will be providing us to prove that liberals are monsters too. And really, how are we supposed to take seriously a book that argues, again, through its very title, that this is nothing more than a "temptation." Is Goldberg's argument that this totalitarian temptation is something that only applies to the Left? That non-liberals are somehow exempt from Lord Acton's wisdom?

All of this brings up, not surprisingly, a shared conservative characteristic. On the one hand, there is wisdom to be found in the men of past ages when it comes to politics, and that there is hardly a better example of this on the American conservative intellectual front than the American political system itself. And one of the geniuses of that system is that it fractures power and forces compromise, so that tyranny can be avoided. And this in turn is premised on conservative misanthropy: a system had to be constructed to curtail the natural inclinations of ambitious men. Conservatives rightly praise this system, and even describe it as conservative, a sentiment I do not entirely disagree with. But if conservatives are misanthropes, then liberals alone cannot be tempted by power. Conservatives, too, are ambitious and greedy and tempted by great power. But that isn't the argument Liberal Fascism is making. And if it is, then why single out liberals? What sort of insight would Goldberg be peddling: "people are tempted by power?" Wow, that's too much for me to process at once...

Which is why Goldberg is so testy. He has written/is writing a book whose premise is ridiculous in first place, made more ridiculous by its author's delays and arrogant claims that it is otherwise. He knows he has written a political attack book that advances an argument which has been made by conservative minds a thousandfold more insightful than his more than half a century ago and with more care, but an argument that has nonetheless fallen apart in the face of time's endless march. As near as I can tell, Goldberg thinks he's living in 1946 and that we must heed both the domestic evil of state welfare as well as the foreign evil of International Communism. To make such an argument today against Hillary Clinton and Whole Foods is rather, well, pathetic, and tells us more about the contemporary American conservative mind than it does about the temptations of liberalism.

The Bush administration has done many things to damage America and one of my chief interests has been the damage it has done to the ideal of political conservatism. I do not know how many self-described liberals or progressives actually care about conservatism's fate but they should. Understanding the transformation of political conservatism in this country over the last 40 years is, in my opinion, the single most important and lasting change to occur in our political culture since the New Deal.

And of course, there would be no conservative movement without the New Deal. Postwar conservatism is a reaction to and, as a political movement, reaction against the liberal welfare state conjured up by FDR and his brains trust in the 1930s. Since relief of economic disaster was immediately followed by response to a military crisis, there wasn't much traction to the idea of seriously challenging the liberal consensus until after the war. It is no accident that the seminal books of the conservative movement would appear at or soon after the war's end, notably The Road to Serfdom (1944), Ideas Have Consequences (1948), The Conservative Mind (1953) and most important, the magazine National Review (1955). The books argue that there is an alternative to the liberal welfare state (classical liberalism) and further that the ideas and theories underpinning political liberalism have had disastrous consequences for American civilization, political freedom and even Western Civilization itself. And with Kirk's exploration of the roots of the conservative mind and National Review's demonstration that conservatism could be taken seriously again, the stage was set for mounting an assault on the theoretical as well as political foundations of liberalism.

All of this is important to understand the current dilemma conservatives find themselves in. Important criticisms of the Bush administration have been growing in frequency, quantity and intensity from the right for some years now. Yet many self-described conservatives continue to support Bush and enthusiastically support whoever will emerge as his more right-wing successor. The obvious question is, "who are the real conservatives?" I make the distinction between the genteel, aristocratic and intellectual conservatives who founded the postwar movement and the more populist, jingoistic and authoritarian conservatives who are the foot soldiers of the subsequent political movement. Given this basic division, the question isn't one of "who is the real conservative," it is "which is more dependent on the other?"

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the conservative intellectual movement was critical to the later successes of the political movement. They provided the theoretical foundations that would generate credible challenges to liberalism and peel off converts like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, Henry "Scoop" Jackson and most significantly, Ronald Reagan. They founded the magazines that would allow conservative ideas to flourish and develop. They organized and networked and created college and youth organizations that gave identity to the next generation. I must agree with Richard Weaver's conclusion that ideas do indeed have consequences.

But without political power, conservatism was only theory, not practice. That all began to change with the political movement that sprung up around Barry Goldwater first in 1960 and with greater impact in 1964. A dispassionate assessment of Goldwater's politics reveals that he was a classic libertarian, socially and economically. But he gave a face to a movement ripe for leadership. He was, as his ghost-written book was appropriately titled, the "conscience" of conservatism. And while the intellectual movement was largely supportive of Goldwater's candidacy, their aristocratic tendencies instinctively recoiled at the bottom-up popular support of his constituents. Lasting damage to the movement could be caused not only by Goldwater himself--whose propensity for gaffes and off-the-cuff remarks were legendary--but by his supporters who were dedicated, ravenous and sometimes dangerous and deranged. National Review had to decide what to do with the John Birch Society, for instance, which promoted such absurdities as Dwight Eisenhower being a communist conspirator. Ultimately the magazine took the wise step of denouncing Robert Welch, the Society's founder, personally, so as not to alienate the Birchers themselves, who were a necessary component towards electoral victory.

For well documented reasons the Goldwater campaign was a disaster that resulted in a landslide victory for LBJ. Also well documented is the triumphalism of liberal journalists, academics and pundits. The "center" held. The "end" of ideology had been achieved. The liberal consensus was here to stay, a permanent fixture of American political life. They were all wrong. Conservatism had not been defeated in 1964, only Goldwater; the movement itself had been triumphant, decisively shifting the center of power in Republican politics away from the Northeast to the South and the Southwest. The conservative populists now ran the party machinery, disciplined by their work on the Goldwater campaign. And they even had a future spokesman, the ex-liberal, smooth talking, fatherly and reassuring natural, Ronald Reagan. He had supported the Goldwater campaign and successfully presented himself the the public days before the election in the televised "A Time for Choosing," which not only displayed the conservative vision with eloquence, but even caused, according to some reports, observers to wonder whether he or Goldwater was the candidate.

During the 1970s conservatives were busy building the alternative think tanks, message machines and political foundations that would form the basis of their power and influence today. And a new generation of conservatives, some activists, some intellectuals, started careers which were not shaped by the postwar ennui of conservatism, but were forged when liberalism was conspicuously in decline. The tension, in my view, never disappeared from these two groups, and what emerged was the sense that conservatism was not only historically, morally, intellectually and factually correct, but that it also was in the public sentiment. Reagan's victory in 1980 created this illusion. It wasn't an electoral realignment, but a political realignment within the Republican party which had occurred. But today's conservatives--young and old alike--seem unable to see past the Reagan mythology that has been deliberately erected in place of his actual record.

On account of this, the scales have only fallen off the eyes of those whose allegiance was always to conservative puritanism; that is the ideals of the movement. They see that George W. Bush is not a conservative and has in fact done the opposite of what a pure conservative would do. Some have come late to this conclusion, deceived as many were, by the aftermath of 9/11. And now that conservative government, as it were, is demonstrably a total failure and disgrace, conservatives must grapple with that fact. Today, the columnist George Will attempts to do just that, making his "Case for Conservatism." I was eager to see how Will, a Reagan-era conservative aristocrat, would argue for returning to conservatism's roots. I was disappointed, to put it lightly. This column reads as though it was written in 1979, when these ideas were somewhat fresh, not 2007, when those ideas have been totally discredited. It is an essay that asks us to forget Bush (who isn't mentioned once) and dutifully works to conjure up every stereotype about the liberal welfare state imaginable. In an article supposedly about salience--he is, after all, making a political argument--his arguments are vintage 1970s: bureaucratic waste; government dependence; interest group dominance; arbitrary egalitarianism. But we are not living in the 1970s. We are living in a world that has been shaped--again, unprecedentedly in my opinion--by the very conservative movement Will was part of. This is ignored. The liberal welfare state and Democratic interest groups, apparently unchanged since the 1930s, are still the paramount problem. Savor this vintage prose:

Conservatism's recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable. Today's political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand. The argument, like Western political philosophy generally, is about the meaning of, and the proper adjustment of the tension between, two important political goals -- freedom and equality.

With the exception of the first sentence, this could have been written at any time between 1950 and 1980. The freedom-equality debate is an ancient one that has become central to the conservative argument for limited government. Confined to these two dimensions, there has been less freedom and less equality under Bush, effectively the "authoritarian" quadrant. Will doesn't mention that, merely insisting that

Today conservatives tend to favor freedom, and consequently are inclined to be somewhat sanguine about inequalities of outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.

I suppose it depends on what conservatives we're talking about. Certainly not the current GOP presidential candidates, who don't think the Patriot act goes far enough or that Guantanamo is large enough or that torture is being used in an arbitrary enough manner. But we'll grant Will that classical conservatism does emphasize freedom and that modern liberalism does emphasize equality of opportunity. Will is, after all, casting the two camps as Platonic ideals at this point. It doesn't last:

Steadily enlarging dependence on government accords with liberalism's ethic of common provision, and with the liberal party's interest in pleasing its most powerful faction -- public employees and their unions. Conservatism's rejoinder should be that the argument about whether there ought to be a welfare state is over. Today's proper debate is about the modalities by which entitlements are delivered. Modalities matter, because some encourage and others discourage attributes and attitudes -- a future orientation, self-reliance, individual responsibility for healthy living -- that are essential for dignified living in an economically vibrant society that a welfare state, ravenous for revenue in an aging society, requires.

Will uses "dependence" to describe liberalism four times in his article, and repeatedly makes dubious pronouncements about liberalism's core intents and goals, such as:

Hence liberalism's goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market's role in allocating wealth and opportunity.

Or this

Racial preferences are the distilled essence of liberalism, for two reasons. First, preferences involve identifying groups supposedly disabled by society -- victims who, because of their diminished competence, must be treated as wards of government. Second, preferences vividly demonstrate liberalism's core conviction that government's duty is not to allow social change but to drive change in the direction the government chooses.

In Will's depiction, greedy teachers and union laborers keep well-intentioned but clueless Democratic politicians on a short leash, forcing government to grow, and with it, dependency. And on the other side of the coin, the "impersonal" (yet somehow benevolent?) forces of the market are stifled, which reduces individual freedom. The political and economic self-interest of individuals are combined, which forms the basis of Reagan-era conservative populism (libertarian individualism): the government is taking from the hard-working and giving to the shiftless, minorities, and other parasitic leeches on society. Whatever you think of the validity of this argument, it was undeniably what elected Reagan. Throw in the macho foreign policy response to liberal weakness in Vietnam and towards the Soviets and you've got an effective and lasting governing ideology.

But that was then. Macho foreign policy has led to Iraq and the costs of that hubris reach deep into the future. "Supply-side" economics has reacquainted middle and working-class Americans with the term "Gilded Age." And conservatives have been at the helm of government for over a decade. People know Republicans are responsible for the deep hole we find ourselves in and that is why self-identified Republicans have plummeted in recent polls and about 70% of the country thinks we're on the wrong track. But for George Will, recent history does not exist. He is, and perhaps always was, living in the 1970s when the conservative movement was about to triumph. Bush is the culmination of the conservative political movement and for Will to ignore that fact is effectively for him to deny it. And denial, perhaps more than anything else, is the defining feature of contemporary conservatism and that which must be overcome if they are to be viable politically again.

We've now had a couple chances to see the GOP presidential candidates stand together and debate and the results have been highly disturbing. While their counterparts in Congress can't wait to shuffle off the Bush albatross, the presidential candidates continue to argue with each other over who will go further than Bush. And there's only one reason they're taking this seemingly counterintuitive route: the bloodthirsty conservative base demands it. As was aptly demonstrated in the Tuesday's debate, offering oneself as a tyrannical president consistently yielded whoops and cheers from the ignorant authoritarians present in the audience. And when one candidate suggested something reasonable--maybe US foreign policy has something to do with Middle Eastern terrorism--a livid Rudy Giuliani let loose an incoherent barrage of violent options for dealing with the Islamofascists, to the mass-rally cheer of the 25%ers Fox News gathered to hear the debate.

This spectacle of authoritarian xenophobia and demagoguery got me thinking back to my longstanding prediction about Gingrich and McCain being the two candidates most likely to win the nomination and what led me to that conclusion. With regards to McCain, his earlier inevitability as a front runner along with his unwavering support for the War and its escalation signaled to me that he could easily capture a major chunk of the GOP voting base. Events since then have demonstrated a McCain campaign that has repeatedly shot itself in the foot and erased any advantage that inevitability might have had. And in a crowd of candidates that all want more war, more torture, less liberty and more authority, there's just nothing to make McCain stand out.

My inability to recognize that the GOP candidates would distinguish themselves by being worse than Bush also clouded my judgment about Gingrich. I assumed, in the wake of a conservative movement deep within an identity crisis, that Gingrich would represent a return to conservative ideals that firmly repudiate Bush conservatism. My mistake was in assuming that these principled conservatives would be politically engaged. Rather it has been the most bigoted and bloodthirsty elements that are leading the charge. And the candidates are giving them red meat by the truckload. Whether it is abortion, war, homosexuality or immigration, the response has been unblinking power, slavish authoritarianism and exclusionary policy. This is nothing but the war cry of conservative white Christian males who demand that they rule the globe. And the candidates are giving them just that. How is Newt to compete? Sure, he holds many of these views himself, but how is supposed to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack? Indeed, that is the major problem with each of the GOP candidates. The consensus amongst people like me who analyze politics (professionally or otherwise) is that Giuliani's lead in the polls is due to his early adoption of the authoritarian model. From the get-go he was the pro-torture, pro-war, anti-liberty candidate whose entire candidacy rested upon his 9/11-forged mythological image. That is why Rudy's social liberalism is so far irrelevant to the base. His promise to use the presidency as a position of tyranny is enough for the 25%ers. If he held orthodox right wing views on abortion, gun control and immigration, he would already be the nominee.

This is all to say that I've had to rethink my predictions. It isn't clear who the nominee will be, and that is due to the candidates' group decision to throw general electability to the wind and run campaigns that cater exclusively to a distinct minority of the country. I didn't expect the candidates to go this far right, in other words. And actually, I'm glad they are taking such reprehensible and unpopular positions. It forces the GOP into a corner and hastens the crackup that has been in the works for the past couple years. It's better for the public at large to see exactly what conservatism has become and decisively reject it rather than to delay the inevitable.

April 25, 2001: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2001, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States in support of this national observance.

May 1, 2001: This year marks the 44th commemoration of May 1 as Law Day, U.S.A., a national day of observance to celebrate our legal heritage. On this occasion, we reflect on the role our legal system plays in the lives of every American and how the freedoms we enjoy would not be possible without a strong and independent judiciary. The theme of this year's Law Day, "Ensuring the Rights of Victims," acknowledges our gratitude for a legal system that recognizes the importance of protecting the rights of those who are victimized by crime.

May 1, 2002: One of our Nation's greatest strengths is its commitment to a just, fair legal system and the protection it affords to the rights and freedoms we cherish. On May 1, we observe Law Day to draw attention to the principles of justice and the practice of law. The theme of this year's Law Day, "Celebrate Your Freedom: Assuring Equal Justice for All," acknowledges the essential task of protecting the rights of every American.

April 30, 2003: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day.

May 1, 2003: Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

May 1, 2003: America was founded on the ideals of liberty and equality for all, and the Framers of the Constitution created three branches of the national Government to uphold these principles. The third branch, the Judicial, is responsible for administering justice fairly and impartially. On Law Day, we recognize the achievements of our Nation's legal system and our independent Judiciary in sustaining the rights and liberties we cherish.

April 30, 2004: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2004, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day.

April 30, 2004: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87-20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2004, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also call upon Government officials to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

April 29, 2005: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2005, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day.

April 29, 2005: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87 20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2005, as Law Day, U.S.A. I also encourage Americans to observe May 1 through May 7, 2005, as National Juror Appreciation Week. I call upon the people of the United States to acknowledge the importance of our Nation's legal and judicial systems with appropriate ceremonies and activities, and to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

April 28, 2006: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2006, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day.

April 28, 2006: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87-20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2006, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also call upon Government officials to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

April 28, 2007: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87 20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also call upon Government officials to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

April 30, 2007: NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Loyalty Day. I call upon the people of the United States to participate in this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day as a symbol of pride in our Nation.

I have a question to ask, but it should be considered in the context of these words:

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?" Iacocca writes. "Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'?"

He savages Bush's famous determination: "George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping," Iacocca writes. "There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty."

He accuses Bush of substituting macho for courage: "Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk."

And he scoffs at Bush's business-degree background: "Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters."

Question: How was George Bush elected president twice? And this isn't a discussion of voter fraud or Supreme Court intervention or any of the electoral details. Rather, my question is, broadly speaking, what conditions made president Bush possible? Even Iacocca voted for him in 2000, when it should have been apparent that Bush-the-man would lead directly to Bush-the-failed-presidency. At that time maybe people wanted a Republican president after eight years of Clinton. Or maybe they bought into the "compassionate conservative" message. Or maybe they identified with Bush on the level of values first, and policies second. Perhaps he was just seen as the lesser of two evils or the better of two poor choices. Whatever the reasons, the people who voted for Bush in 2000 didn't see what I saw. I saw a phony. A prep-school brat refashioned as a regular guy Texan. A repeated failure at business. Someone whose accomplishments in life derived solely from his famous family. And his attitude. People either intrinsically liked him or intrinsically loathed him. And he was given a chance by voters, though not a majority, and ascended to the White House not on his strengths, but because the Constitution was ignored in his favor. But I can't say I'm flabbergasted that people voted for Bush in 2000. I was correct in my assessment of the man, as the past six years have demonstrated, but I could not be certain of that in 2000.

The 2004 election, on the other hand, should have left no doubt. People actually voted for him again! That amazes me. I still see cars with Bush/Cheney 04 bumper stickers as if they're actually proud of their vote. These are the 30%ers who, as Atrios once noted:

The people who voted George Bush and the Republicans into office this year didn't do so because they were conned by a right wing asshole posing as a compassionate centrist. They did so precisely because he is a right wing asshole.

The point of this isn't to point out that there are people in this country who are authoritarian pseudo-fascists, bigots and misogynists. The point is, why is it somehow "normal" to be an authoritarian pseudo-fascist, bigot and misogynist? This is how I view this whole Don Imus brouhaha. The fact that the now-unemployed Imus is a racist and misogynist isn't news. After all, he's been at it for decades. Rather the reaction of his media pals is stunning. Tom Oliphant: "Solidarity forever, pal." Howard Fineman: "some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore." And what about other high profile media figures who regularly make similar comments? In other words, why do media outlets--and not just the conservative ones--feel the need to load the airwaves with authoritarian pseudo-fascist bigoted misogynists? Is this just some perversion of the notion that news media ought to simply give the people what they want? And why is "what people want" always--always--the most low, base and ugly of humanity? I know such sentiments exist--that's not the point. Why is it emphasized, as if it is "normal?" (To wit, on NR's Corner)

These questions provide us with the answer to my first question of why George Bush is president. We all seem to believe that we got what we voted for, that there really are more authoritarian pseudo-fascist bigots and misogynists than we thought, and technically, that's true: Bush won the popular vote in 2004. But isn't it fair to say that the political environment was, shall we say, tenderized, prior to--and during--the Bush administration? That we slowly became accustomed to the rantings of right-wingers and began to accept--though not believe--their message that perversely suggested that white males of privilege were being persecuted by liberal norms? Rush Limbaugh, of course, was the pioneer in this field. Now there are Rush Limbaughs on radio, on TV, on the internet, on cable, in magazines, in newspapers and in best-selling books. We have become conditioned to the anger of the "silent majority" who is, clearly, silent no longer. And by "conditioned" I don't mean brainwashed, I mean it in the defining sense that new cultural standards have been set. And they have been set by authoritarian, pseudo-fascist, jingoistic, bigoted, misogynistic right-wing demagogues who took over and corrupted the ancient political label "conservative."

The irony here is that conservatives are supposed to be cultural elitists, not fear-mongering populists. And that explains why George Bush is president. The conservative label was wide enough to include enough people for a governing majority but the extreme elements also took on a life of their own. And even though a formidable conservative alternative media rose up to challenge "liberal bias," the complaint remained that liberal elites still ran everything and had to continually be challenged. Unfortunately, people who made decisions in the "liberal media" failed to recognize the conspiracy paranoia of the new populist right-wing and took themselves to task. Thus the drive to restore "balance" and to seed all media with conservatives--the nastier the better. And now we're supposed to be shocked that there are bigots on our airwaves? The news media slept in the bed it made. And worse, the news media can't simply be voted out of office. If we consider the news as an institution, then what lends that institution legitimacy? The First Amendment allows the news to exist separate from government but what gives it legitimacy is autocorrectional: the norms of the professional news business let journalists police themselves, and lets the public trust the news it reads. Ironically, objectivity itself has led us to our present state. And it blinds journalists from saying what is obvious to everyone and Lee Iacocca: the emperor has no clothes.

Bush is a disaster in every conceivable way. He is at best a fool who never should have been given power, at worst a threat to our republic and the world. It is a testament to our system of government that the Constitution still lives and breathes, though it is very much in peril, in my view. But you wouldn't get that impression from the news. And that is because they have internalized the worldview of right-wing extremists who are in reality a distinct minority. Media amplification makes them seem more important and more representative of normal people and that perception must change. I titled this "The Public Interest" even though I have not yet said a word about it. But it lingers throughout these words as the unspoken alternative to our corrupt news media. Our news media has a cancer and I believe it can be cured by submitting news to a simple test: does it serve the public interest? Or does it serve the needs of a minority of ideologues who do not represent the best America has to offer? Under this standard, there would be more stories about the imperial presidency because it serves the public interest. There would be no stories about Nancy Pelosi "surrendering" to the Syrians because it only serves the worldview of right-wing fanatics. Most important, facts serve the public interest, and lies never do. Sadly, it seems most journalists failed to recognize that Stephen Colbert is a satirist, because they seem to believe that reality indeed has a well-known liberal bias. And reality, most of all, serves the public interest.

My political communications professor was fond of saying, "you can't fight frames with facts" and that is precisely why health care "reform" must first be about countering the political obstacles to implementation. If your goal is some form of universal, state-subsidized health care, then it is useful, as others have pointed out, to look at the history of similar successful endeavors to determine whether we are in the right political moment to create something on par with Social Security or Medicare. It is my belief that we have not yet arrived at that moment, though it is very likely we will in the near future.

When Social Security was created and the federal government's scope greatly expanded, it was done under extraordinary circumstances. Not only did the Great Depression create the conditions for the welfare state to become salient, but voters translated those conditions--vague need and desire for change--into a Democratic supermajority in government. In fact, only the unelected federal branch--the Supreme Court--had to be forced on board by Roosevelt's court-packing scheme. But the voters who provided the Democratic electoral realignment did not request specific policy details, nor did they understand them. The power of interest groups to demand specifics was not in the 1930s what it is today. Voters provided the institutional advantage for Roosevelt's Brains Trust to hammer out the specifics (notably Keynesian economics). And although Democrats remained in the majority for a generation, the landslides of 1932 and 1936 were political moments that could not be easily replicated.

A very similar thing happened during the next large wave of federal expansion during the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson, master of parliamentary maneuvering and consensus-builder, was able to exploit sympathy for Kennedy's vague and bold pronouncements to push his ambitious domestic legislation through a Congress that while not as unified as the one Roosevelt had, nonetheless was a unique legislative opportunity. Combined with the crushing of Goldwater in 1964 and the widespread assumption that the liberal consensus was here to stay, Johnson was able to promote his Great Society.

These historical details are conspicuously devoid of any real opposition to Social Security or Medicare, and for good reason. There wasn't an organized criticism. In the 1930s there wasn't a "conservative movement," and in the 1960s that movement was only beginning to become self-aware. National Review was the first point of organized opposition, decrying Eisenhower's slow-paced adoption the welfare state as a "Dime-store New Deal." The movement was envigorated by the Goldwater campaign but even though future supply-side demigods like Milton Friedman were providing the critical intellectual and academic foundations for rejecting the welfare state, they were advising a campaign that was hindered by its candidate more than anything else. It wasn't until the 1970s that the conservative movement spawned a coherent and independent (from the GOP) public policy network to advance conservative arguments against the welfare state. And even during Nixon's tenure in the White House, the EPA was created in what today would be considered anathema to movement conservatives.

Today, of course, the conservative movement is fluid, disciplined, well-funded, and ubiquitous. It can't simply be ignored so when considering Democrats' chances for establishing universal health care one important item to note is that there is a network of opposition that did not exist during the New Deal and Great Society. Furthermore, the legislative resistance to those programs was only overcome through reliable majorities in Congress that Democrats do not today possess, but might in the future. This is why the details of the policy are not very interesting to me because they are irrelevant to the fight against the conservative movement's counter-arguments. You can't fight frames with facts.

And what is the conservative frame that must be overcome? In the simplest terms it is libertarian, republican, and based on the conservative conception of freedom through the catch-all ideology of individualism. For what I think is a very typical of the conservatives of this generation, consider this post from National Review's Corner by Jonah Goldberg:

Maybe, just maybe, France and Denmark can handle the systems they have because they have long traditions of sucking-up to the state and throne? Marty Lipset wrote stacks of books on how Canadians and Americans have different forms of government because the Royalist, throne-kissing, swine left America for Canada during the Revolutionary War and that's why they don't mind big government, switched to the metric system when ordered and will wait on line like good little subjects. Liberals constantly invoke Sweden as a governmental model without paying much heed to the fact that Sweden's government succeeds as much as it does because it governs Swedes. And maybe, just maybe, the reason America doesn't have a sprawling European welfare state is that America isn't Europe. And, unlike some of our liberal friends, Americans don't want to be Europeans. Indeed, that's why so many Europeans move to America, so they can be Americans.

I found this link at another blog, whose author mused "Instead of arguing about the efficacy and efficiency of a policy (in this case government run health care) Goldberg says we can't have it because American culture would reject it. When someone like Goldberg stars [sic] using culture, it's a sign that they can't argue for their point with hard facts." It's true, Goldberg isn't making an argument based on evidence, but that's only part of the story. The "American Culture" argument is such that irrespective of whether it is true or not, conservatives believe it. Thus not only is the conservative solution to the health care problem superior for various cultural reasons, it has the backing of conservative academia (think tanks) AND--this is key--they believe the American people are on their side (i.e., Americans are naturally conservative). This, I submit, is the biggest obstacle to ushering in universal health care in this country. It doesn't matter that the American people have long supported universal health care in opinion polls (though they are, of course, conflicted on the details), they have never had a medium through which to make those desires salient, except the flatness of an opinion poll (which dulls the urgency of the desire) and that allows the well-honed and market-tested message of the conservative movement to speak on behalf of "the people." The only real competition in the realm of ideas is a long-standing liberal dream to make universal health care a reality. Yet the details receive the most attention and while the details will someday be important, they count little towards the immediate and future political battles. You can't fight frames with facts.

The very use of the term "health care reform" implies the existing system needs to be fixed. But the "big thinking" is quite the opposite: the current system is broken (indeed, it is "Sick") and needs to be replaced with something completely different. Since radical change has never had legs politically, terms like "reform" persist. But when both conservatives and liberals talk about reform, the conservatives instantly have the advantage. The only way to erase that advantage is to counter every conservative claim about creeping socialism (fight the frame with a counter-frame based on fact) and continue building a Democratic majority in government. With that majority and a weakened conservative message machine, Democrats just might (although not in the near term, due to the fiscal disaster wrought by Bush--not a good time to propose expensive domestic legislation) be able to pull off universal health care. And then they can start worrying about the details.

Three recent discussions on TPMCafe--the question of an intellectual blogging elite, how to approach political activism, and the current debate with the DLC--have circled around the central problem of political organization for the Democratic party. In each of these cases the fundamental tension has been between vesting authority in the hands of an elite (often, but not always, centralized) and dispersing that authority amongst national party leaders, local activists and organizers, and, of course, the so-called netroots. I don't think anyone denies that parties need leaders, so the question is really who is the best to lead? And here I believe it is useful to examine how the Republicans consolidated their power and whether their successes offer any lessons for an emerging Democratic majority.

Imagine you're a Democratic strategist in the 1990s. You're only now becoming aware of a highly disciplined Republican message machine that is able to deliver identical talking points across various media to constituents. You see two possibilities: you could try to build a Democratic network on the same principle or you could try to refashion the Republican talking points for a centrist audience. You reasonably conclude that the Republicans are winning because either their message is more appealing to voters, or their message machine is superior at convincing voters. So which is it? Polls tell you that voters endorse Democratic policy proposals so they must be voting for Republicans for a different reason. You try to retool your message to appeal to center-right voters but it yields negligible--if not outright negative--results. Perhaps it might be time to start building a comparable Democratic message machine.

But there's a problem. The Republican message machine works because it is highly disciplined. Through diverse media outlets, the same message gets delivered and unity is expressed. How, you might wonder, are Democrats to do the same? After all, Democrats are a big tent of competing interests so how is one to develop a system for delivering a unified message when the party can't even express what it stands for? Moreover, you might wonder how the Republicans were able to paper over the very deep differences in their coalition--notably the alliance of libertarians with social conservatives--and still motivate their base? Why should such Janus-faced doublespeak be a hindrance to the Democrats but not the Republicans?

Leaving the musings of our hypothetical analyst behind, we can appreciate the problem of replicating the Republican message machine: its very success is dependent on total obedience to the message and Democrats can't decide on their message. They can't win elections by talking in Republican-lite either so what to do? We've been hearing for years that Democrats suffer from a dearth of ideas. I believe instead that Democrats suffer from an inability to articulate their ideas. But that is only part of the problem. Who is going to articulate those ideas? The intellectuals? The party base? The DLC or some other leadership organization working with the party? I propose that this disagreement can be resolved by accepting that the party in power will remain there only insofar as it can articulate a timely populist message that resonates with the majority of voters. The problem with invoking populism is that the very word carries historical connotations that disturb conservative--read: aristocratic elite--power structures. So whether that elite is perceived to be a business class antagonistic to collective action and federal manipulation of the economy in the Progressive Era, or perceived as a bureaucratic elite stifling innovation and suppressing freedom in the Reagan Revolution, the response has always been organized and framed as a populist revolt against entrenched power; and executed in a timely fashion with the right message--think 1932 or 1980--it has led to a new governing ideology based, initially, on popular--though not exactly revolutionary--revolt.

Because America is not tied to an aristocratic or feudal past and has only known liberal democracy as a political system, it is natural that the populist message almost always wins. Add to that the polarizing nature of the two-party system and it's clear to see that the winning strategy to have a superior populist message. Naturally new governing majorities create their own elites almost immediately, but that does not mean the original populist message loses its salience immediately. It takes time for the new power structure to become intolerable, even if it was always intolerable to a few keen political observers. The point, from a strategic point of view, is to identify the populist zeitgeist, and the Republicans have given the Democrats an ideal foundation on which to build a superb populist message. Here there is a place for the local activists to hone that message. There is a place for the netroots to focus in on the populist message. The national party leaders can provide discipline. There is even a place for organizations like the DLC to use the advantages of being in the "establishment" (even if it is a waning perception) to promote the message at the highest levels. The elegance of this system is that it not only gives each of these interests a role, but it also creates a unified message distributed across multiple media at the highest and lowest levels. Nor does this require massive investment or long term institution building. There's no need to directly compete with the conservative "counter-establishment" because that assumes balance and an objective public that can rationally decide between the two. Rather it is engagement with the conservative message machine and staying on-message, never yielding to the rhetorical traps that have plagued Democrats and liberals for years. Republicans have lost their ability to speak in populist terms and have fallen back on exploiting the lowest prejudices in humanity to rally their base. But that base is not enough to win elections. And every time Democrats talk about the war, the economy, health care, jobs, etc. in populist terms, they win another vote. Republicans will scream about class warfare, but this projection strategy will not work any longer if correctly countered. It doesn't take a detailed discussion of macroeconomics to demonstrate that Republicans have been waging class warfare on Americans for decades. And this is the right moment to say that unequivocally.

Common ground? Look no further than Democratic Populism.

In the spirit of "relying upon unsubstantiated media narratives (Democrats weak! Republicans strong!) while ignoring evidence from your own newspaper that directly contradicts that narrative" style journalism in the Post that Greg Sargent links to here and here, I thought it might be useful to pick apart a similar Adam Nagourney-penned story from last week:

Still, there are questions and risks for the new majority party. The biggest question is how far can Democrats go in opposing this president? The biggest risk is going so far that they feel the sting of a backlash -- of being transformed from the fresh new face of change to the latest cast of Washington players enmeshed in partisan wrangling.

What backlash? This sure makes the public sound unpredictable and impatient. Nagourney doesn't tell us what this backlash means, just that Democrats are in danger of overextending their power.

Democrats clearly have some leeway to go at least as far as they have gone, if not further. A poll for the Pew Research Center last week suggests that Americans are strikingly sympathetic to Democrats: 50 percent said they identified with or leaned toward the Democrats, compared with 35 percent for Republicans. Their main opponent, President Bush, is weighed down by the war and his own unpopularity, making him feeble on this field, even Republicans said.

The problem with this paragraph is that it contradicts the rest of Nagourney's story. Here he provides real evidence that the public is fleeing the GOP and the president and instead embracing the Democrats. But Nagourney can't believe this is true so he seeks out a second opinion:

Yet Democrats need to take care in managing their moment. There is a recent history of aggressive Congressional majorities paying a price for being overly confrontational. The Republican Congress that impeached President Bill Clinton went on to lose five seats in the midterm elections; generally, the opposition party can expect to gain seats in midterms during a president's second term.

Gee, do you think that the public turned against the GOP in 1998 because they tried to impeach a president with an approval rating twice that of Bush? Do you think the public--while condemning Clinton's personal behavior--saw how despicable the Republican witch hunt was? But Nagourney suggests that that political moment is somehow comparable to today. Utter nonsense.

Democrats and some historians say that what to do here is clear, though how to do it may be another matter. Democrats will have room to maneuver as the tough hall monitors of this administration -- think hearings on Katrina and Walter Reed Hospital, more push-back on Iraq and, yes, more subpoenas. But not unless they can also compile a record of legislation by the time the next election comes around.

I guess that 100 hours of legislation never happened. I guess Nagourney forgot that Bush wields a veto pen. He must have also forgot that Democrats do not have veto-proof majorities. But the biggest omission is that the Republicans of the Gingrich era do not compromise. And they don't need to. When your fundamental goal as a party is to destroy the government's ability to do anything other than control the personal and private lives of its citizens, then you don't need 67% to do it. You only need 51%. That's why Bush has governed during his two terms as if he were elected in landslides. Getting in power was the only important thing. All bridges were burned after that.

But how easy is this going to be in this political environment? The party holds a slim advantage in the Senate. For all intents and purposes, it will be impossible to pass big legislation without a few Republican defections. (And yes, that can very well happen as the next election approaches if Mr. Bush continues to be so unpopular.) Democrats marked their first hours controlling the House pushing through a series of high-profile bills, on issues ranging from ethics to stem cell research. Most of those have not passed the Senate.

Nagourney acknowledges some of the difficulties, to his credit. But what gets me is his parenthetical suggestion that Bush might bounce back. Why would he? He is unpopular because he refuses to let go of policies that are unpopular. It's really that simple. And what journalists like Nagourney fail to realize is that Bush isn't politically constrained the way most politicians are. He doesn't care what the public thinks. He could have a 1% approval rating and he would wield executive power the same way. That is a huge obstacle. And that means Democrats have to force him to change because he won't change on his own.

''Democrats have no intention of going where Republicans went,'' said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ''The Republicans went to such an extreme when they wanted anything from the president, when Clinton was in power, including e-mails from the vice president's office. Democrats are not going to go that far.''

Asked if he could see any situation in which Democrats would bow to a small segment of liberal voters who were pushing for, say, impeachment, Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is the party's conference chairman and was serving in Mr. Clinton's White House at this time of that impeachment, responded sharply. ''That's not going to happen,'' he said. ''Forget it.''

''We have to continue on parallel tracks, to show that the other parts of government are moving,'' Mr. Emanuel said. ''If the only thing coming out of Washington is the confrontation on executive privilege, that's a moral hazard.''

I don't personally agree with the assessment of these top Democrats. But by quoting them, Nagourney feeds the idea that excess partisanship is a constant threat to the ever-so-fragile Democratic majority. What bugs me is how "partisanship" is defined. When the Republicans did it, it was an impeachment frenzy on flimsy charges. Now the Democrats are in danger of being partisan because they are trying to fulfill the promise that got them their majority? This is supposed to generate a "backlash?"

On Iraq, the party could be perceived as so broadly antiwar that it could undermine its efforts to reassure voters that it can keep them safe in an age of global terror (a theme that even a weakened White House and Republican Party continue to push hard).

Democrats weak, Republicans strong. Polls have consistently showed, from before the midterm elections, that the public wants our involvement in Iraq to end. The public is antiwar. But in Nagourney's mind, antiwar is a hippie burning a flag and spitting on troops. In other words, barely qualifying as reality. Nagourney suggests that the antiwar cliche is not a niche but potentially a force that could overwhelm the Democrats, making them pacific and weak and unable to fight the war on terror. Sounds like something Rove would have orchestrated against John Kerry in 2004. Nagourney doesn't appear to know what year it is.

And in going after the administration on whether the Justice Department removed the federal prosecutors for purely political reasons, it could risk appearing focused on another partisan feud at a time when many Americans would prefer to see the two parties address health care, education and other issues more central to their lives.

"Many Americans." No data. And the reason is the data suggests that the public does think Congress should be investigating the prosecutor purge. Instead, Nagourney ignores this and casts the public as unconcerned with politics and more focused on their personal lives.

To summarize: Nagourney has written a piece that abounds with two general cliches about American politics that originated with neoconservative and Republican criticisms in the 1970s. First, Democrats need to prove they are strong on national security, whereas the Republicans somehow have this ability naturally, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Second, Democrats are inclined towards partisan bickering rather than compromise, despite all the evidence that it has been Republicans who have been playing that game for at least a decade (Even Reagan compromised). A better article would acknowledge the real institutional limits on the Democrats' power (notably the lack of a reliable veto-proof majority) and the absolute necessity for Congressional oversight of an administration that has claimed extraordinary unchecked powers for itself. Instead we get an article that relies upon tired cliches to sustain itself, and focuses on the unending gamemanship of politics which either generates disinterest or backlash in the public, depending on the paragraph. This is just bad political reporting, no two ways about it, and demonstrates how far we have to go to restore the fourth estate's reputation as the watchdog of government.

Much like David Brooks yesterday, Charles Krauthammer would like to fool us into believing that there is no real scandal here, just bad actors on both sides of the aisle. So let's pick him apart too:

It's not a question of probity but of competence. Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it.

Yes, that would be the incompetence dodge. Forget that Gonzales lied to Congress. Forget that Gonzales has changed his story. Forget that Gonzales just wants this problem to go away. According to Krauthammer, there never was a scandal, never any wrongdoing, yet Gonzales is so incompetent that he can't tell the truth without lying. That is what Krauthammer is arguing.

How could he allow his aides to go to Capitol Hill unprepared and misinformed and therefore give inaccurate and misleading testimony? How could Gonzales permit his deputy to say that the prosecutors were fired for performance reasons when all he had to say was that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and the president wanted them replaced?

That's what I'd like to know too. That's what Congress would like to know. And that's what the American people--at least those who are paying attention to this story--would like to know as well. All of these unanswered questions require an inquiry, but Krauthammer is distracting us, again, with Gonzales' would-be incompetence.

And why did Gonzales have to claim that the firings were done with no coordination with the White House? That's absurd. Why shouldn't there be White House involvement? That is nothing to be defensive about. Does anyone imagine that Janet Reno fired all 93 U.S. attorneys in March 1993, giving them all of 10 days to clear out, without White House involvement?

What conservative column would be complete without repeating the "Clinton did it too" diversion? Krauthammer is either lying or ignorant. Clinton, like all previous and subsequest presidential administrations, replace US Attorneys at the beginning of their term(s). And, again, to repeat, what is is so unique about what Bush did is that he fired them in the middle of a term for reasons that were later proved to be false or at best, highly questionable. There is no doubt, repeat, no doubt about this anymore. Apparently the Washington Post, and whoever else carries this fool's column doesn't care about basic factuality.

For the next six paragraphs Krauthammer attacks Democrats by saying things like

Democrats are charging that this was done for reasons of politics and that politics have no place in the legal system.

Are they really arguing that? So far we've seen a Congress interested in getting to the bottom of what happened and an administration doing everything it can to stonewall. Like I've said, if there's nothing to hide, then who cares if there is sworn testimony before Congress?

Those decisions are essentially political. And they are decided by elections in which both parties spell out very clearly their law enforcement priorities. Are you going to allocate prosecutorial resources more to drug dealing or tax cheating? To street crime or corporate malfeasance? To illegal immigration or illegal pollution? If you're a Democrat today, you call the choice "political" to confer a sense of illegitimacy. If you're a neutral observer, you call the choice a set of law enforcement priorities reflecting the policy preferences of the winner of the last presidential election.

Because Republicans never do this. Only Democrats are motivated by politics, right?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Pursuing voter fraud is not, as the New York Times pretends, a euphemism for suppressing the vote of minorities and poor people. It is a mechanism for suppressing the vote of (among other phantoms) dead people. Conservatives have a healthy respect for the opinion of dead people -- conservatives revere tradition, which G.K. Chesterton once defined as "the democracy of the dead" -- but they draw the line at posthumous voting.

It gets pretty incoherent here as Krauthammer ties the super-politicized Democratic party to the liberal media and then sprinkles on a healthy dose of conservative reverence for the dead, which as we all know, those godless liberals would never do except when they need to stuff ballots.

But this is an opinion piece, so Krauthammer can rant all he wants. I'm not particularly interested in his worldview which I find something less than disgusting. The real gem comes at the end where he ties everything up:

If the White House decides that a U.S. attorney is showing insufficient zeal in pursuing voter fraud -- or the death penalty or illegal immigration or drug dealing -- it has the perfect right to fire him. There is only one impermissible reason for presidential intervention: to sabotage an active investigation. That is obstruction of justice. Until the Democrats come up with real evidence of that -- and they have not -- this affair remains a pseudo-scandal. Which would never have developed had Gonzales made the easy and obvious case from day one.

I have no idea what the "easy and obvious case" Gonzales was supposed to make. Just another 11th hour incompetence distraction. The point Krauthammer is making is that this isn't a scandal. It only becomes one when real evidence arises. I see. So, until we have the smoking gun with fingerprints, everything else, the lies, the distractions, the stonewalling, the documents, the testimony--all of that--is fueling a "pseudo-scandal." Krauthammer can hide behind neologisms all he wants. It doesn't change the fact that no one really knows the reason why those attorneys were fired, it was highly unusual, and the Democrats are going to get to the bottom of it. I doubt Krauthammer felt the same way when the Republican Congress spent three years and $50 million dollars investigating Clinton and coming up with...nothing.

But Republicans never do anything for shallow political reasons, right?