Dismissing Your Unworthy Opponents

One of the things that amazes me is how folks like Ann Althouse, for whom I have great respect, can get along just peachy with folks like Matthew Yglesias, for whom I admire only for his perfunctory ability to put words to a page. Beyond that, this is the kind of guy Snooper would identify as loving "nothing better than to slaughter the Eagle." Perhaps it's that people of Althouse's professional profile - being in her case an occasional columnist at the New York Times, etc., and who appears regularly on Bloggingheads.tv (with these same said people) - might prefer ideational amity rather than ideological enmity.

As for me, I guess I don't do that kind of nuance. If ideas have consequences, I tend to bristle at how some folks put over radical boilerplate as "good policy" or "sophisticated analysis." Perhaps that kind of style deprives antagonists of cul-de-sacs of comfort, which is something Daniel Larison raises in his takedown of Nate Silver's argument today regarding progressives:

For someone inclined to accuse others of dishonesty, Silver is being fairly deceptive in his labeling from the beginning. Naturally, he is going to set up his own position as the rational one and the one he is attacking as implicitly irrational. That isn’t the main point here, but it is typical of the technocratic, anti-populist side in any debate to frame disagreements with their critics as a battle between reason and passion. You can find this with David Brooks’ description of anti-TARP Congressmen as “nihilists” (even though their skepticism and advocacy for alternatives were entirely warranted and correct) or any of the usual pro-war and pro-immigration advocates that seek to impute malicious intent or hatred to their opponents. This is a method used for dismissing, rather than engaging, and for treating opposing arguments as inherently unworthy of attention or serious consideration. Technocratic types prefer practicing this politics of contempt, because it automatically rules out serious objections to certain policies as automatically invalid and invests them or people like them with a certain unchallengeable authority. They tend to make respect for expertise into a debilitating inability to question experts’ assumptions and biases.

Dismissing rather than engaging, ahh, like E.D. Kain, for example, who ridicules George Will's perfectly good argument against global warming hysteria with a kind of stuffy intellectualism:

Essentially, global warming has become just another talking point in a long and growing list of talking points that the conservative movement uses to keep apostates out of their fold (shrinking that big tent) and to berate liberals with, rather than viewing warming as both a real cause for worry, and as an opportunity to demonstrate honest governance. Apparently obstructionism and denial are better tactics.

It seems to me in this case E.D. would be the "technocratic type" who is "practicing a politics of contempt" against more populist folks (or those who identify with populists) like George Will, Scott Johnson, and Michelle Malkin. It gets pretty confusing, or simply, those who accuse others of claiming unchallengeable authority cloak themselves in a sort of, well, unchallengeable authority, and then not too much debate gets accomplished.

Note how Larison dismisses those like Silver, who argues for pragmatic reason over radical ideological passion, as of the same kind of intellectuals who advocate "for starting wars and expanding the role of the security state" and "for policies that are illegal and result in detaining, harming or killing other people."

And that's really it. It's all dismissal of opponents here in the end, while folks like Larison and E.D. Kain pretend to have real "internal" debates with people just like themselves, who while adopting various political labels indicating different ideological persuasions nevertheless express opinions the differ little on substantive merit. Antiwar leftists like those at Open Left obviously have much more in common with paleconservatives at AmCon than they would at Weekly Standard. In the same vein, "liberaltarians" are pretty much the same as Oakshottian postmodern conservatives, particularly in advocating anything-but conservative policies such as same-sex marriage absolutism. Basically, you get a lot of guys under different monikers who get along just peachy, making no need to carve out spacy cul-de-sacs of disagreement, since the point isn't really to debate, but to mislabel and repackage policies that have already been repudiated by traditionalists in the great silent cultural majority.

Maybe nuance is better than pummeling pushback, although I'd rather end up bloodied and unbowed than patted on the bottom by some soft-and-squishy policy mentors after a good day at the faux-debate playground.

Tammy Bruce: Conservative Moral Power

I'm reading Tammy Bruce's, The New American Revolution: Using the Power of the Individual to Save Our Nation from Extremists. I was particularly struck by this passage on the left's devilish program of moral confiscation, which needs no further comment from me:

I was privileged to be a part of a panel at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend, an annual event that brings together like-minded independent thinkers. After my presentation, two women approached me. They identified themselves as conservatives and confessed they had finally accepted that conservatives should acquiese the moral high ground to liberals and focus on their strong points - economics and limited government.

I was astounded. Here were two smart people, both businesswomen and quite successful, attending a conference that showed they were aware, educated, and in touch with the details and realities of our cultural and political civil war. And yet even they had been so brainwashed by the Left that they not only believed the Left was a moral force, they had lost touch with the power and morality of their own conservative foundation.

Here's what I told these women: It is the conservative who holds the moral high ground. The Left Elite, whether through lies or their own paralyzing groupthink, are the opposite of what they claim. Not only do they lack any sort of moral authority, but also they have desecrated the very idea of decency and values by using those ideals as slogans in their attempts to smash them into oblivion.

You must realize the Left's effort is not to gain the moral high ground, it is only to squat and defile that land once they have tricked you into leaving it. Make no mistake, their intention is not to act morally or enact decent policies or truly help the individual. It is to take the moral high ground from you so you will have no place to stand.

If Leftists can successfully make you feel as though they will take care of the moral needs of this nation (do you realize how absurd that sounds?), then you will stop daring to interfere, they hope. And when you stop interfering, when you retreat, the Left's own hypocritical inaction guarantees this nation will be condemned by their god of nihilism, narcissism, and self-hate.

But they can only do it if they can manage to make you believe the sickening lie that they have morality and decency on their side, while you are sadly lacking. It is imperative for you to know that they are working feverishly to steal your identity. They want you to believe, as the women at the conference did, that you have been usurped by better, more compassionate people.

"Peaceful, Even Joyful, Protests Against Proposition 8"

This picture shows some of the violent-hooligan "No on H8" protesters who targeted Westwood's Mormon temple on November 6th, following passage of the traditional marriage initiative in California. We indeed find peaceful activists here, of course, but see additional photos of gay mayhem at the Los Angeles Times' slideshow, "Proposition 8 Protests":

I'm reposting this stuff to counter Andrew Sullivan's meme that last year's gay-rights demonstrations were "peaceful, even joyful." Oh sure, Sullivan's slurring "Christianists" such as Michelle Malkin, et al., while on the streets gay radicals were peppering black passers-by with the "n-word." See, "N-Word Hurled at Blacks During Westwood Prop 8 Protest":

Not that this wasn't expected. The recent passage of California's Proposition 8 has exposed some of the latent racism of many within the LGBT community—instigated in part by many in the e-telligentsia such as revisionist Andrew Sullivan and sex advisor turned sociologist Dan Savage. Unfortunately the "blame the blacks" meme is being commonly accepted by some so-called "progressive" gay activists. A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.

Christy Hardin Smith's also getting into the act here, denouncing some new issue advertisement out of West Virginia: "Boogah boogah scary gays ooogah boogah ..."

"Scary gays" is putting it mildly. Lock your doors people. The homosexual hills have eyes.

Neoconservative Antidote to the Postmodern Left

Dr. Sanity has a big post up offering some musings on Barack Obama's faux post-partisanship and the ever-attendant fawning media, plus some historical perspective on presidential greatness (will George W. Bush win history's vindication?). But frankly, I think Dr. Sanity's just getting some stuff off her chest, and as neoconservative I can fully relate:

The left deeply fears neoconservatism and the economic and political freedom that it supports, and will stop at nothing to discredit its ideas. But they cannot do it using reason, reality, and truth; so these impediments they must abandon.

Neoconservatism is far from perfect. After all, neocons are ordinary human beings - as opposed to Obamacons who are perfect beings of pure (and vague) "hope and change" postmodernism. As I noted in "What the World Needs Now":

The problem is countering the source of this pervasive nihilism, promulgated and promoted by the West's own intellectual elites under the pseudonym of postmodernism.

And the only intellectual remedy brought forth in the last five decades to nullify postmodern philosophy and rhetoric is neoconservatism.

If you listen at all to the MSM, you might begin to think that neoconservativesm is either in dissaray, dead and abandoned by all its former adherents.

Indeed, the left said pretty much the same thing even before Ronald Reagan got elected in 1979. It was wishful thinking then, and it is wishful thinking now.

Today's left is a nothing more than the hallow shell of what was once known as "liberalism"; and it is held together by the empty and meaningless rhetoric of postmodern intellectual nonsense, otherwise known as political correctness and multiculturalism (or, cultural relativity).

Neoconservatism as an intellectual theory actually arose from the observation in the 1960's that classical liberalism had been hijacked by the left and its essence literally reconstructed to suit the needs of socialists and communists who were beginning to realize that the jig was up for them.

All over the world it was becoming apparent that political and social collectivism was an abject failure. Where implemented, such policies led to intractable poverty and misery economically; and unbelievable oppression and the crushing of the human spirt politically and morally.

I have discussed elsewhere how the recent revival of socialism and its collectivist/totalitarian agenda in the late 20th and early 21st century was made possible by the adoption of postmodern epistemology, rhetoric and politics by western intellectual elites ....

The rise of neoconservatism represents the only modern intellectual counter and the only known antidote to the infection of postmodernism and its resultant toxic effects on philosophy, rehtoric, and politics.

In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Furthermore, they had to deconstruct and invalidate human consciousness, making sure that the everyone understood that the only apparatus available to humans for perceiving reality - the mind - was completely unreliable, and that the evidence of the senses must the refore be discounted. This intellectual strategy resulted in a pervasive cultural relativism and intellectual nihilism that permeated all aspects of society and intellectual thought. Words and language were redefined to mean whatever one wanted; history was deconstructed - ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless; and the ideas and values that were the foundation of Western civilization were mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.

So today's polls seriously presented as meaningful and full of import by a somber MSM at the behest of their political masters is nothing more than an attempt to hijack history and historical analysis. To strip it of its very meaning in the true postmodern tradition, and to ensure that it cannot be used by true scholars to expose the pathetic lies, abject economic failues and horrific human legacy of leftist thought.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Danger Ahead? Searching for Liberals, Progressives, Radicals

One of the things that's endlessy fascinating about the progressive left is how adherents vehemently resist being identified as "liberal," "radical" or "socialist."

Today's progressives are simply the heirs to the New Left anti-establishment activists of the 1960s, in the most immediate sense. In the larger scheme, these folks are the standard-bearers of radical-left ideological movements that are based in Marxist theories of class struggle and utopian goals for transcendance from poverty and misery. The strains found on the left range from today's establishment Democratic Party to the most hardline revolutionary factions such as International ANSWER. Programmatically, progressives vary on questions of the pace and scope of reform of capitalism and the balance between individual autonomy versus state control of the most basic personal space. What we've seen most recently, as I noted yesterday, is an emboldened progressive paternalism that, by dint of electoral victory in November, sees itself as politically empowered to transform society's rules and institutions in dramatic fashion, away from competition, markets, and transparency to conformity, command, and intolerance of individual initiative (see, for example, "Totalitarianism in Leftist Fairness Talk").

But again, leftists will not talk about what they really want and what they truly stand for. If they did, they'd be even more reviled and repudiated than they already are. To win power, today's left has to frame its agenda in terms of "change" rather than "collectivism." President Barack Obama, the first genuine chief executive of modern progressive-left ideology, was nutured and formally trained in communist-post-structural activism, ideology, and anaytical methods. It's no surprise that bonafide Stalinists organizers and registered communist parties endorsed his campaign for the presidency last year. But when called out on this, leftists cry foul. They denounce any identification with "socialism" or "radicalism" as McCarthyite fearmongering or BushChenyite domestic terrorism.

Yesterday, for example, Jillian at Sadly No! threw an ignorant hissy fit over Newsweek's recent cover story on "We Are All Socialists Now." After throwing out a number of encyclopedic definitions of "socialism," and bandying about the notion of the "means of productions, a favorite Marxist concept, Jillian gives us this whopper:

“Means of production” is a term that refers to the actual productive industries in a society that make things which people buy. McDonald’s is an example of one of these productive industries; they make hamburgers. Now, there has been some talk about the government nationalizing the banking industry. But, American journalism, what I want you to understand is that “banking” - according to socialists - is not a productive industry. Banks don’t produce things - they don’t produce physical things that you can buy like you can buy a McDonald’s hamburger. Now, it’s not that socialists don’t have a lot to say about the nature of finance as an industry, but we’re not going to go there now - there’s a lot of big, scary, hard to understand words involved in the concept, and we’re going to start small. Just trust me that even if our government does completely take over the financial sector of our economy, that’s still about as far from “socialism” as you can be.

Boy, it's a good thing McDonald's' market share is up during the economic crisis - their managers won't have to turn to the giants of "industrial finance capital" for funds to keep the wheels of hamburger "production" rolling. Will somebody please send Jillian copies of Das Kapital and Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism? Man, this women needs to bone up on doctrinal foundations!

Not so much with David Sirota, who is the author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington.

Sirota's up in arms this morning over Nate Silver's essay today, "The Two Progressivisms." Silver, who recall made a splash last year as the breakout polling expert of the presidential campaign, breaks down progressives into binary categories, as "rationalists" and "radicals," which is another way of contrasting "reformers" from "revolutionaries."

The essay is worth a look, not the least of which for Silver's nice table drawing contrasts between the two strains. What's interesting is how Sirota pounces on Silver faster than the Dobermans in They Only Kill Their Masters (and keep in mind that Silver's own identification as a genuine "rationalist" is belied by his own lapping at the pig's trough of progressivism this last year or so).

In any case, here's Sirota's smackdown, where in particular he takes exception to Silver's notion that today's progressives are "dangerous":

If American history teaches anything, it is that the "dangerous" epithet is the last and most banal refuge of those who seek to preserve the status quo. From Joe McCarthy slandering progressives as dangerous communists to George W. Bush saying anti-war activists were dangerous terrorist sympathizers, Estasblishmentarians have been painting their foes as threats to the nation for decades.

Aimed at me individually, the charge is clearly so silly it should undermine the credibility of anyone making it. I'm a journalist, an author and a blogger. The idea that I alone can "marshal an army," as Nate says I can, is laughable. I mean, yes, I'd like to think my work is making an impact - but me alone "marshaling an army?" If you think that, you're spending too much time with Michael Phelps and his bong.

The idea that my work, or the work of anyone more "radical" than Nate Silver, is "dangerous" - well, that's not laughable, nor is it insulting, really. It's a badge of honor, and I want to thank Nate for throwing out the epithet. I say that not because I think the progressive movement is "dangerous" to the United States, but because it is, in fact, dangerous to the status quo, and throughout history, when the status quo starts calling progressives dangerous, it means we're actually starting to make a serious impact.

I'll let readers enjoin the debate at the links.

It is interesting that Sirota first decries any talk of today's progressives being "radical," then rejoices in the notion that his movement is "dangerous," in the same way for example that Martin Luther King, Jr., was "dangerous." Things are much more complicated than this, I imagine, although it's true that Dr. King flirted with communist associations and ideology during his run as the nation's most important civil rights leader.

But labels are less important the definitions and doctrine. Simply put, today's progressives are radical in that they fall the farthest to the left of the ideological spectrum, where the farther we go left the more drastic and far-reaching is the change desired. It's not kosher for folks to use terms like "liberal" or "socialist" nowadays, and that's why Jillian and her similarly less-informed brethren endlessly evade such identifications, and it's also why David Sirota obscures any coherent definitions of his ideological foundations at all. These people will engulf moral goodness in a reign of deceit and decrepitude, and they'll enforce mediocrity through the elimination of competition and initiative. We're seeing the lies of the left already, less than one month into the Obama administration. Leftists are pushing to quash free speech and mobilize union power against "corporate expropriators."

Most common people will be fooled by the left's legerdemain of nomenclature ("hope" and "change"), but rest assured, both Jillian and David Sirota are in cahoots in the very "dangerous" radical destabilization that Nate Silver describes. Indeed, it's much more dangerous than even he realizes.

Darwinian Fundamentalism

Last Thursday was the 200 anniversay of the birth of Charles Darwin, the intellectual progenitor of the theory of natural selection. Just about every mainstream publication's run some essay or another on Darwin's impact, for example, the New York Times, "Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential."

What's interesting to me about this latest round of "Darwinmania" is the rekindling of the politics of evolution versus divine creation; and as a "scientist" (a political scientist actually, trained in positivist ontological methods), folks might have wondered where I come down on all of this?

Well, as a believer in the essential compatibility of faith and reason, I'm not one to get too worked up about the conflicts between the science of national selection and the theological origins of man. It's a complicated thing, especially in terms of historical timelines (the natural life of the earth is said to be in the billions of years; the Biblical creation just a few thousand), although we can at least make reference to Stephen Jay Gould's doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria, in which he argues that evolution is "both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief ..."

In any case, debates over religion and society have been particularly intense following last year's general election and the passage in three states of initiatives making marriage available to one man and one woman exclusively. Radical critics attacked people of faith mercilessly, and the left's meme is that "Christianists" have increasingly become the core cell of a "Talibanized Republican Party" (if that makes any sense ...).

In any case, here's a snippet from Stephen Jay Gould's 1997 essay, "Darwinian Fundamentalism":

I am amused by an irony that has recently ensnared evolutionary theory. A movement of strict constructionism, a self-styled form of Darwinian fundamentalism, has risen to some prominence in a variety of fields, from the English biological heartland of John Maynard Smith to the uncompromising ideology (albeit in graceful prose) of his compatriot Richard Dawkins, to the equally narrow and more ponderous writing of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (who entitled his latest book Darwin's Dangerous Idea). Moreover, a larger group of strict constructionists are now engaged in an almost mordantly self-conscious effort to "revolutionize" the study of human behavior along a Darwinian straight and narrow under the name of "evolutionary psychology" ....

The radicalism of natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature's benevolence, order, and good design, with humans at a sensible summit of power and excellence, proves the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent creator who loves us most of all (the old-style theological version), or at least that nature has meaningful directions, and that humans fit into a sensible and predictable pattern regulating the totality (the modern and more secular version).

To these beliefs Darwinian natural selection presents the most contrary position imaginable. Only one causal force produces evolutionary change in Darwin's world: the unconscious struggle among individual organisms to promote their own personal reproductive success—nothing else, and nothing higher (no force, for example, works explicitly for the good of species or the harmony of ecosystems). Richard Dawkins would narrow the focus of explanation even one step further—to genes struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies (organisms) under the control of genes—a hyper-Darwinian idea that I regard as a logically flawed and basically foolish caricature of Darwin's genuinely radical intent.

The very phenomena that traditional views cite as proof of benevolence and intentional order—the good design of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems—arise by Darwin's process of natural selection only as side consequences of a singular causal principle of apparently opposite meaning: organisms struggling for themselves alone. (Good design becomes one pathway to reproductive success, while the harmony of ecosystems records a competitive balance among victors.) Darwin's system should be viewed as morally liberating, not cosmically depressing. The answers to moral questions cannot be found in nature's factuality in any case, so why not take the "cold bath" of recognizing nature as nonmoral, and not constructed to match our hopes? After all, life existed on earth for 3.5 billion years before we arrived; why should life's causal ways match our prescriptions for human meaning or decency?

I'll have more later, dear readers ...

Totalitarianism in Leftist Fairness Talk

One thing I've been noticing more and more in monitoring debates on the Democratic-left is how for radicals fairness is the handmaiden of totalitarianism.

This morning's example is Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars (via Memeorandum), who's attempting to defend the left's resestablishment of the "Fairness Doctrine." Check out the contradictions of the following passages:

Here in Seattle - the town Bill O'Reilly derides as a "far left haven" - one would think that a properly functioning free market would create offerings on local AM radio reflecting the political climate: generally liberal to middle of the road, with a few dedicated conservatives hanging in there.

But that's not what we get.

We have three all-conservative talk stations in town. The largest news station has a popular talk show featuring a right-winger and a fake centrist. The other big news-talk station, KIRO, is supposed to be a pan-ideological station; it features a popular centrist Democrat but also one of the most obnoxious right-wingers - and no genuine liberals, having dumped David Goldstein awhile back. And then we have a little Air America station that's reasonably popular but only runs nationally syndicated material and does nothing locally.

I have friends in the Bay Area who tell me it's not any better there. (I'm sure readers from there can fill us in down in the comments.) And in Washington, D.C., the owners are shutting down their progressive talk station in a population that's decidedly Democratic.

It's happening all over, and it's a problem, because these are the public airwaves, not just the private commodities that are radio stations - which is why we have a Federal Communications Commission in the first place. We need to talk seriously about reforming radio so that the public's well-being is served on its airwaves.

Now, we've had a little fun making fun of the right-wing paranoids for getting all worked up about this issue well in advance of it actually surfacing. But now it is in fact surfacing: Sen. Debbie Stabenow earlier this week said she'd be interested in taking a look at reviving the Fairness Doctrine ....

What Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been telling their audiences is that any talk about the Fairness Doctrine is actually about trying to "silence" them. But of course, no one's interested in "silencing" anyone on the right: all we're talking about is creating a level playing field on the public airwaves so that a broad range of viewpoints can be heard instead of just one narrow bandwidth of ideology. This notion, naturally, is what they fear most, since their ideas don't compete well outside the vacuum they've created.

Neiwert goes on to indicate that he's opposed the Fairness Doctrine in the past, altough not on principle - which is noteworthy for the context here - but because it wouldn't work to overthrow the "structural defects" of the marketplace, which clearly include the fact that mainstream Americans don't buy what the left is selling over the airwaves. Indeed, looking over that passage above is just classic: All of these extremely left-wing cities can't keep on the air the brainless blather of socialist talking heads, obviously, "since their ideas don't compete well outside the vacuum they've created."

And I'm not being facetious. Seriously, you have to really take a look at what Neiwert's proposing:

The core problem is ownership: Radio station ownership in the past twenty years has been decidedly conservative. And anyone who's worked in media can tell you that ownership sets the tone and direction of what you do. After the Fairness Doctrine was removed, these wealthy right-wing owners effectively proved right one of the fears that drove the creation of the Fairness Doctrine in the first place: That the wealthy can and will dominate the political conversation on the public airwaves by simply buying up all the available space. Since the wealthy in this country are overwhelmingly conservative, the end result was not only predictable, it was in fact predicted ....

Rather than bring back the Fairness Doctrine, though, it might be better simply to reform the structure of how FCC licenses are distributed and make diversity of ownership a priority ...

We need to have robust, informed, and mature discussion about reforming radio and the use of the public airwaves. Unfortunately, because of the wingnuttery of the right, that's been all but impossible.

Perhaps we can start by framing this not as an attack on right-wing radio but on creating a level ideological playing field - not driving out the right, but ending the dominance of right-wing wealth.

One of the things that's actually rewarding about being in the minority is how the accession of Democrats to power has truly unleashed the statist-totalitarianism in the left's agenda that was disguised from view - or repudiated as "wingnuttery" smear - during the campaign.

The brutal truth is that the left cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. The logical outcome of that competitive impotence is to simply remove the market mechanism itself. This is the essence of state-socialist ideological advocacy. An ideological truth - socialism - that is so frequently resisted by the slow-witted cattle of the leftosphere, is in fact being repackaged, ironically, as "robust, informed, and mature discussion" toward state violence and control of freedom of speech and commerce.

Every day I'm more and more flabbergasted by the tenor of debate in the country, which is really to say that it's sometimes shocking to see how the left simply refuses to debate and defend it principles and programs. Following the passage of the Obama-Democratic-left's stimulus porkulus maximus (without debate or public airing), hardline leftists are now urging a repeal of the filibuster, since it's "not right that the minority party" should be able to slow the socialist-hegemonic tide.

I know. It sounds unbelievable. But the top voices of the nihilist leftosphere have been agitating for the repeal of congressional protections against tyranny of the majority, for example, Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, Hilzoy, and Matthew Yglesias.

People keep asking, "what is happening to our country?" Well, this stuff is, and the majority of sheeple who facilitated this monstrosity of Democratic power have no one to blame but themselves.

(O)CT(O)PUS = CYBER-BULLY

Some time back, (O)CT(O)PUS, the anonymous proprietor of The Swash Zone, began leaving the most awful comments on my blog. These were plainly trolling and abusive drive-by taunts. I tolerated them for some time and then finally I sent him an e-mail as follows:

(O)CT(O)PUS:

My blog, my rules, hello?

You've said your piece on your own blog. Maybe you've gotten some of your derangement off your chest.

You're free to comment on my blog as long as it's germane to the post, of which your earlier comments we're not.

Follow the rules, or be banned...

Donald

A few months later, I left a couple of comments at The Swash Zone, at entries posted by Captain Fogg and Repsac3, as the blog is a group effort. I frankly didn't make the connection to (O)CT(O)PUS (who I later realized runs the place), and for that transgression I received this threatening warning in my e-mail inbox:

And these are my rules: DO NOT HARASS ANY OF MY WRITERS AT "THE SWASH ZONE" AGAIN. IF YOU HARASS ME OR ANY OF MY WRITERS ONE MORE TIME, I WILL NOTIFY ELOY OAKLEY AND DONALD BERZ AT YOUR PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT AND TAKE IMMEDIATE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST BOTH YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYER. THIS GAME OF YOURS ENDS HERE.

The ALL-CAPITALS format in BOLD TEXT are in the original.

I have to admit this caught me off-guard, and recall this stuff isn't new, as I've received hate-mail and death threats before.

But I want to draw readers attention to the stark differences here in the comparative responses: My original e-mail simply requested of (O)CT(O)PUS that he abide by a standard of decency and relevancy. He was free to comment at my blog without personal attacks on me or my readers. No threat was made or implied. (O)T(O)PUS in return, and in response to comments at posts he had not written, and that were not directed at him, threatened my livelihood, and my employers (oddly enough).

There's a real cheap cowardice at work here that's not only annoying, but downright creepy.

Considering this, it's even more bothersome to find a whole new post dedicated to this threat at American Nihilist, a blog set up by Repsac3 to ridicule and smear me for fun and a bit of revenge (the only relief available in the face of the intellectual incompetence inflicting these demons).

Entitled "DEFAMATION - DONALD STYLE," (O)CT(O)PUS is responding to my take down of Captain Fogg, who implicitly called for the execution of Rush Limbaugh in a post last month. (O)CT(O)PUS gets fairly vicious at the post, but it's the conclusion that's out of this world:

We know these behaviors all too well, and why some of you bother with this pinhead is beyond me. The Coward is not welcome at The Swash Zone; we delete his comments immediately. More disturbing are the comments and e-mails left by his followers: Profane, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic … worthy of report to the FBI. What to do?

If the Coward or any of his followers harass you online you, contact President Eloy Oakley at (562) 938-4122 or Executive VP of Academic Affairs Donald Berz at (562) 938-4127 and describe the harassment. For serious online abuse or defamation, there is always this option (case file in progress).

So notice here: Not only has (O)CT(O)PUS now escalated his campaign of harassment with a public call to threaten my employment, but he's accused me of online abuse and defamation without one shred of evidence.

It's been almost six months since I first e-mailed (O)CT(O)PUS and I haven't heard one word from my college administration or from a plaintiff's attorney. It's funny too, because Repsac3's blog is all about abuse and defamation, for example in the next post to follow (O)CT(O)PUS', where Truth101 impugns my reputation by smearing me as "Donald the Dog."

And remember, all of this is taking place at a blog called "American Nihilist," which (if you click the link) is a website specifically designed for a demonic campaign of personal attacks against American Power.

What's all very interesting here is that each and every one of my antagonists goes by an anonymous online handle. Now that's cowardly. And worthy of a little analytical consideration.

Readers may recall that I noted, in response to TBogg, that I'm reading David Denby's Snark. Denby's extremely liberal, so a lot of his stuff is suspect, but I have to admit he's got one of the best discussions of online anonymity I've seen so far:

People who start their own blogs almost always identify themselves, but many snarking writers exercise power anonymously, hiding behind a handle, attacking people who appear in public, who run blogs, or other commenters. The insults come out of nowhere, as if waiting for the occassion. But why hide? This love of anonymity is amazing to me. If you have something to say, why in the world would you want to hide yourself? ....

The answer, of course, is that anonymous writers are either ashamed of what they're saying, or, alternatively, quite proud of what they're saying, but, in either case, they're not eager to confront anyone directly ... Anonymity frees us to attack whites, blacks, Muslims, men, women, gays, birders, arachnophobes, philatelists - frees us in a way that would be impossible in the office, at a cocktail party, in a bar, or a schoolyard ...

Denby continues with the notion that anonymity is inherently childish, something that's available to essentially non-grown-ups. But there's a totalitarianism to anonymity as well, for as Denby notes, "a phone call to the secret police is a much more serious act than a snarking post, but that's the kind of negative vibe anonymity can give off - it's not something to be played with; it has danger lurking in its secrecy."

And that's a perfect way to summarize the cyber-bullying of (O)CT(O)PUS and his demonic allies at American Nihilist.

These people are manifestly ignorant pests of juvenile proportion. But they're totalitarian as well, in the classic standard of today's left where dissent against the Obamessianic line is not tolerated. But things have gotten to the point in which I can't ignore the abuse and attacks. While of course these idiots have no plausible case for a lawsuit, the opposite in my case is nearly true. "Donald the Dog" is pretty close to defamation, although these brilliant hacks don't have the faintest clue as to the inherent hypocrisy of their project.

If it's any consolation to me, it's simply the fact that what I do at American Power is working, and that's to expose the left's truly diabolical plotting for the death of moral right in this country, and when the left is reduced to pure babbling incoherence in failed attempts at intellectual parry, their only recourse is rank bullying.

As always, I'll stand my ground, even in court with legal representation if it comes to that.

You're Bamboozled, Sucker

Via the People's Cube, "'Thank You Sucker' Motivational Currency Replaces Dollar":

Obama won the election with a rhetoric that skillfully replaced the words "socialist revolution" with the word "change." Now he is skillfully replacing the word "recession" with "catastrophe." The next logical step is to keep the economy running by replacing "dollar" with "thank you."

But see also, Vinegar and Honey, "The Big Bamboozle":

I think that generations from now ... we will look back and tell our children that this was the moment when our country got sold out, when we lost hope of ever again being able to believe in what was good, and right, and honorable ... that this was the moment of the beginning of the end of our once great nation.

I can't add anything to that, so read the whole thing, here.

The Crisis of Liberaltarian Intellectualism

In yesterday's entry, "Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty," I focused on the ideological incoherence, intellectual pedestrianism, and moral perfidy of the left-libertarians who are often labeled "liberaltarians" (with most of my attention directed at Mark Thompson's League of Ordinary Gentlemen).

Robert Stacy McCain kicked up a bit of a controversy with his critical comments on these folks, "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," and he's generated a new (and quite raw) response from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values: "Must You Be Out of Touch With Reality to Be An Economic Conservative?" These passages are particularly juicy:

The current left/right divide is now primarily over social issues, civil liberties, and one’s position on the Iraq war, with economic issues no longer providing a clear delineation between left and right. The left/right continuum has increasingly become based upon two parameters: support for liberty on the left in contrast to the authoritarianism of the right and support for science, reason, and a reality-based view of the world on the left versus the reactionary opposition to modernity, science, and reason from the right. This division can be seen in Robert Stacy McCain’s response to Wilkinson’s views on liberal/libertarian fusionism ...

Ron cites a passage from Robert's post that stresses the bedrock of Middle American "Rotarianism" and the religious traditionalism of the Republican base. He then continues:

In expressing this belief in creationism, McCain already demonstrates a limited ability to either think rationally or to coherently comment on the issues of a twenty-first century world. The degree to which he is out of touch with reality also comes from the manner in which his views of liberals comes from a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotype as opposed to anything which exists in the real world.

The typical liberal is just as likely as most conservatives (and more likely than Rush Limbaugh) to be in a traditional marriage, go to work every day, and abstain from drug use. The difference between liberals and social conservatives is not as much life style as the toleration of other life styles. Many of us live a basically conservative life style but do not feel the drive seen among conservatives to use the power of the state to impose their life style and personal choices upon others ....

Obama’s victory was an example of the emergence of socially liberal and economically conservative or pragmatic voters as we had a significant impact in both the Democratic primaries and the general election. All of us affluent wine and latte drinking liberals who enjoy and understand the virtues of the free market are still around despite all the opposition from both the Clintonistas and Palinistas. Our views may or may not win in future elections, but we have become a force to counter both the views of the big-government elements of the left and the authoritarian right.

Genuine thanks should be tendered here to Ron Chusid, who has provided a fabulous window into the mind of those of contemporary left-libertarianism.

Robert Stacy McCain has already replied to Chusid's piece, in "Faux Argument," where he writes:

Chusid's "about" page envisions a point at which "Republicans break free of their control by the religious right and neoconservatives." I'll let the neocons defend themselves, but what harm exactly has the "religious right" done to deserve Chusid's contempt or hostility? Who does he have in mind by this term, "religious right"?

Well, as a bonafide (and increasingly despised) neocon, I'll take that as my entree into this stage of the debate (and be sure to check Robert's link). So, first notice all of Ron Chusid's demonic attacks on traditionalists as backwater yahoos, as "authoritarian" and "reactionary" people who oppose "modernism" and "science." These people are also unable to "think rationally" or "comment coherently" on the issues, and are thus unfit for life in the "twenty-first century world." Further, with full obligation to the nihilist fever swamps of the netroots left, people like this take all their talking points from "Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotypes."

Okay, this is all quite interesting. No, wait ... it's more, it's utterly fascinating actually, unbelievable in fact, since it's defies reason that for all of Chusid's hot and heavy upturned cosmopolitanism, he still claims left-libertarians are practically jonesing to be "in a traditional marriage."

But wait! Traditionalism is bad, right? Shouldn't Ron be repudiating that old fashion stuff, not embracing it. I mean really, if these backwoods yokels are so ignorant and reactionary, you'd think the enlightened types like Ron Chusid would be beating a path to abondon such "stereotypical" lifestyles faster than you can say Stonewall. It's all so mid-twentieth-century like.

But more than that, the truth is the left-libertarians aren't at all in favor of "greater liberty" and "free markets." I mean take a look around. Some of the same folks who're are now key proponents of the liberaltarian movement are some of the biggest apologists for state centralization of the economy (only the Obama administration hasn't yet "incorporated" enough "libertarian thinking") and they advocate the violent supression of the free speech rights of marriage traditionalists, as we've seen in California with the extremist left-wing backlash to the passage of Proposition 8. Indeed, basic religious freedom of expression itself is totally under fire by these very same "libertarians" (yo, look out Mormons), although someone's forgetting that religious liberty is the very first item selected for protection in the First Amendment, and is historically guarded as a key foundation of a free people. It's thus exceedingly strange for one who promotes "liberal values" to make such hackneyed attacks on conservatives as this. Aren't there enough Daily Kos clones online?

Further, Ron Chusid doesn't understand economics himself if he thinks the Obama administration's getting anywhere closer to freedom anytime soon. There's been all kinds of attacks on the new stimulus legislation and the process, from bloat to the absence of transparency. But as a killer of liberty, this one's got to take the cake. On the question of parental autonomy alone, as Michael Franc noted Thursday, the Obama-Democratic left evisicerate families by guaranteeing that children would be able to receive family planning benefits without parental knowledge whatsoever! It must be a violation of libertarian logic of historic proportions for someone like Ron Chusid to be railing away at country bumpkins while simultaneously claiming to be an advocate for family traditionalism amid the biggest expansion of state power in 75 years. God, there's got to be a bigger bogeyman than flag-waving creationists who want to have babies!

To be sure, what about this notion that libertarians are just like marriage traditionalists except they don't "impose their life style and personal choices upon others"? Is there any particular age, for example, in which libertarians have decreed it as being okay for kids to have sex and bear children? Of course, folks like me - us "evil neocons" - might sound a little "authoritarian" when rejecting juvenile liberaltarian licentiousness as social policy. You know, some people might actually be inclined to think that their "life style" is actually the superior one for the preservation of life and liberty, and the recreation of preferred standards of right.

I mean really, I'm just blown away here ...

When did left-libertarians abandon universal morals? Can Ron Chusid and his brethren even be taken seriously, when by implication the libertarian thesis holds that every human action, every decision made on the basis of personal liberty, is of equal benefit to the regeneration of moral society? It certainly seems that way, when we have examples (only the most recent) of people like Nadya Suleman - the now notorious "Octomom" - having aggressive fertility treatments at will, essentially on demand, with the demonstrated results likely to put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in public-benefit expenses. Is that something that's truly in the public good? Whoo hoo, liberaltarians! More choice, more freedom, more out-of-wedlock fertility "science" enabled babies!

The fact is, choice is the handmaiden of responsibility. Liberaltarians, or progressive conservativces, blah, blah, as far as I can see, are hardline leftists who are afraid to admit it, so they cloak themselves in a bunch of incoherent hogwash about superior knowledge of free markets while their electoral "choices" empower Democratic mandarins who are now advancing a proletarian-minded leftist-authoritarianism hell-bent on dismantling the institutions of liberty that have made and kept this nation great for over 200 years.

We're facing a complete bankruptcy of intellectual honesty and moral righteousness, and Ron Chusid's ilk are blazing the trail down the highway of good intentions. So, who really is so "unprepared" for a life of increasing complexity in modernity? Don't bet on the completely bereft liberaltarians, who in fact offer nothing more than the losing hand of demonic compromise to a secular messianism of libertine supremacy.

Historic Abandonment of Journalistic Integrity

Michael Shearer and Alec MacGillis, at the Washington Post, are literally stumbling over themselves in building up the $787 billion Obama-Democratic-left's stimulus packages as a feat comparable to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions":

Twenty-four days into his presidency, Barack Obama recorded last night a legislative achievement of the sort that few of his predecessors achieved at any point in their tenure.

In size and scope, there is almost nothing in history to rival the economic stimulus legislation that Obama shepherded through Congress in just over three weeks. And the result - produced largely without Republican participation - was remarkably similar to the terms Obama's team outlined even before he was inaugurated: a package of tax cuts and spending totaling about $775 billion.

As Obama urged passage of the plan, he and his still-incomplete team demonstrated a single-mindedness that was familiar from the campaign trail. That intensity may have contributed to missteps in other areas, as the president's White House stumbled repeatedly in the vetting of his Cabinet and staff nominees. And high-minded promises of bipartisanship evaporated as Republicans accused the president and his Democratic allies in Congress of the same heavy-handed tactics that Obama, in his campaign, had often demanded be changed.

Missteps in other areas?

I think they mean the total repudiation of the campaign's promises for hope, change, and a new era of responsibility. And the authors are blaming the GOP for abandoning bipartisanship? Republican members of Congress weren't even including in bill-writing and markup, "completely excluded from the process and it was done without Republican input or public oversight."

And people wonder why we've had growing cynicism and declining engagement in the political process for decades? Analysts say the traditional news media is a dinosaur on the way out, and it pains me to say this as a traditionalist supporter of the broadsheet press, but it's frankly impossible to find honest news and analysis nowadays in the mainstream media outlets. It's no longer maddening, it's frightening - and the burial for stories like this one at the Post can't come too soon.

A Post-Auto-Industrial Society

This morning's Wall Street Journal features a front-page report on the progress with the General Motors automotive bailout: "GM to Offer Two Choices: Bankruptcy or More Aid" (the full essay is available here).

GM's basically demanding more money, billions more. The Detroit car manufacturer is "too big to fail," as some argued late last year as the firm headed into possible bankruptcy. The prognosis heading into GM's March 31 deadline for a viable restructuring plan doesn't look good, and those working on various contingencies "say progress has been slowed by the fact the Obama administration has yet to appoint a 'car czar,' as envisioned by the bailout program."

I haven't followed the auto bailout all that closely, just enough to note that I leased a new Honda Civic in December, where I asked, "What Happened to Buy American?" But the latest New York Review has a thought-provoking essay that's worth a look, especially for its intellectual honesty regarding the purposes and rationales for government intervention in the American automobile sector: "Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?"

The author is Emma Rothschild, who is the Director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge, and the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University.

Here's this from the essay:

The present and impending disorder of the automobile companies is a reminder, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, of the desolation of the Great Depression. It is a reminder, too, of economic history, or of the rise and decline of industrial destinies. When the listing of the "Fortune 500" began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation, and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007. GM was the "largest industrial corporation in the world," in its own description of 1989, and it was engaged, at the time, in "the most massive reindustrialization program ever attempted." It was an incarnation of American economic change, as a GM vice-president suggested during the earlier automotive crisis of 1973: "To say that a company that has successfully grown over a period of 65 years—a period marked by two world wars and a major economic depression—will suddenly be unable to adapt to the changing challenge...flies in the face of common sense"; it "denies history."

This next section is particularly interesting for me, having grown up in Southern California, the car-culture capital of the world:

The automobile industry has been one of the losers in the new American economy. US consumers spent less on new automobiles in 2007 than they spent on "brokerage charges and investment counselling"; in 1979, they had spent ten times as much. In 1979, the share of the auto industry in US GDP was more than twice that of the securities and information services industries together; in 2007, it had been reduced to less than a quarter of their share ....

But the auto-industrial society, with its distinctive organization of American space, cities, highways, social entitlement, and energy use, has continued to flourish. Some 90 percent of Americans drove to work in 2007, 76 percent of them alone. Less than 5 percent went to work by public transportation. The people who used public transportation were much more likely than other Americans to be black or poor; they were more likely to be women than men; most of them lived in New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The states in which population has increased most rapidly—Utah, Arizona, Texas, Nevada —have low population densities, and low rates of public transportation use.

The relative decline of public transport has been attributed to the very long-term preferences of Americans for being alone in cars, or for being free to go anywhere and at any time, or for living without other people in close proximity; to investments in the interstate highway system; and to the enduring patterns of American zoning and land use. But 80 percent of the US population still lives in metropolitan areas, and some 30 percent in the densely populated city centers. The pattern of land use in the expanding cities of the South and West—which have had the most rapid population growth, with very few people per square kilometer—was itself established over the period that has elapsed since the energy crisis of the 1970s. It is a consequence of prices as well as preferences, and of the changing distribution of public expenditure, or public partiality.

I've had my own car since I was 17 years-old. My home is just a couple-of-minutes walking distance from the local Metrolink station, although there's currently no commuter route directly to my college in Long Beach. If there was, I likely would opt for public transportation at least some of the time, but I would always be a car owner, as would the overwhelming number of people I know. So, any shift toward a "post-auto-industrial" society has to be not just predicated on economic and environal considerations and justifications, but on normative-cultural ones as well.

And this is what's interesting about Rothchild's essay. She comes out explicity in favor of a broader social-cultural transformation to a new transportation-infrastructural public order:

An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit ... would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be open to the sorts of improvements that have been suggested in the expansion of rail and bus transportation in China, Japan, and France, for example, and in India by the information technology services companies. It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of "automotive" freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time, in Asia as in America. The improved public transport would be used for routine travel, such as the "work, school, and medical/dental trips" on which public transit use is already concentrated, according to the National Household Travel Survey. The new hybrid vehicles, in a post-auto-industrial society, would be available for the other trips that the survey describes as "family, personal," or "social, recreation, eat meal."

So, the question for us to think about is now that the Democrats have passed the largest economic bailout in American history, what's next?

Rothschild notes that the Obama-Biden campaign's initial energy plan adopted catastrophic language on climate change and energy dependence. But it's increasingly clear that the more dire warnings on anthropomorphic climate change have been hoaxes. Interestingly, Rothschild focuses on the transformation to a post-auto-industrial society as a program that is in essence predicated on the expansion of civil rights and economic equality, as seen above in the discussion of the proportion of black Americans and the poor who rely on public transportation.

And this brings me back to the issue of honesty and integrity.

The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress, within a month of the accession of the new regime in Washington, have demonstrated that democratic deliberation on the direction of public policy is out. The Obama-Democratic-left wants a redistribution of society's resources but they're not willing to justify it on pragmatic political grounds. The case can be made, easily, for bailing out the states and providing more money for education, health care, unemployment, and other areas hard hit by the deepening recession, and Americans will support that. But the left wants a general transformation of society to a European social-welfare state (if not a Brezhnevite-Soviet command model), and the increasing nationalization of industry - way beyond anything we've seen in the last year's bipartisan financial bailouts - can be seen intuitively as right around the corner. The administration has already included funding for high-speed rail in the "stimulus" boondoggle - and of course transportation enhancement is infrastructure - but so little of the administration's advocacy for greater public spending has been sold in such a way.

The Republicans have an opportunity here. A real stimulus of the economy would be energy deregulation - from Alaska and off-shore drilling to the discovery and exploitation of new supplies, perhaps in the 800 billion barrels of proven shale oil reserves in the Rockies - as well as public-spirited transportation infrastructure-spending focused on explicity non-pork-barrel expenditures that serve to increase economic competitiveness AND facilitate economic opportunity among the traditionally disadvantaged. This is something that GOP partisans should consider, in some variation of public-private balance, using the overarching umbrella-rationale of honesty and transparency in moving this country forward to the next generation of post-industrial society.

A Fundamental Reworking of Our Priorities

This morning's Wall Street Journal cuts right to the chase in their editorial, "1,073 Pages":

Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.

So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency.

That's exactly what Democrats do not want, transparency. What they do want is a wholesale transformation of American life. In response to the notion that the bill was smaller than Democrats had hoped, Charles Lemos at MyDD comes clean on the truth of what's up on the socialist left:

The awful truth is that the economy will continue to shed jobs and 2009 will be marked by a painful contraction of the global economy. The problem is a systemic one and it cannot be cured by fiscal stimulus or even shock therapy. A fundamental reworking of our economic priorities is in order. We need to rethink globalization and unregulated free markets. We have to tackle the world that securitization built, a financial system run amok.

Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty

Robert Stacy McCain has proved once again that he's one of the most important conservative writers working today.

In "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," Robert mercilessly pulls the mask off the alliance between leftists and libertarians, which I've long thought has been one of the most intellectually bankrupt and ideologically decrepit marriages in recent political history. Here's the key passage attacking "liberaltarianism":

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists - the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians - are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There's much more at the link, and I can't provide much value-added to the essay. My point here is to flesh out a little more the fundamental pathology of liberaltarianism, which is intellectual dishonesty.

My point of departure, as readers might have guessed, is Mark Thompson and his blogging buddies at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Thompson's a self-proclaimed libertarian, and his cohorts at the blog are all over each other with intellectual glad-handing and backslapping on their bright ideas on atheism, gay marriage, humanitarian intervention, neoconservativism, and God knows what else. This cabal might well be aspiring to develop some newfangled "postmodern conservatism," but it's really all the same, as far as I can see.

An animating force for the paradigm seems to be the resistance to tradition and universal morality. This can be seen in the excursions on atheism at the blog, where we see commentary suggesting that since there's no possibility for the falsification of God's existence, those of religoius faith are essentially "lunatics" for proposing an alternative theory of evolution in Intelligent Design. Or we can see this in the virtually unhinged attacks on neoconservatives and the war in Iraq, where E.D. Kain excoriates the Bush administration for "invading countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan in order to democratize them ..." Never mind that the origins of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq emerged out of vastly different contexts - with varying methodologies of strategic justification - the overall animus toward the forward use of state power places this "libertarian-progressive" agenda firmly in the nihilist camp of the "world peace" utopians Robert Stacy McCain mentions above.

But what's especially bothersome about these folks is the confused intellectualism on questions of moral right. It's almost stomach-churning to read E.D. Kain's comments on Israel following this week's election: "Israel, once lively with the dream of the original idealists who founded it, has over the years become increasingly militarized, entrenched, and anti-Democratic." This is not much different from the commentary on Israel one finds at the neo-Stalinist Firedoglake. E.D. Kain, of course, has problems with intellectual integrity, as I've already noted, and he joins Mark Thompson in a left-libertarian hall of shame on that score.

It should be no surprise that these folks find inspiration in the ravings of Andrew Sullivan, whose recent libertarian strain led him to suggest that, "Yes, Michael Phelps took a few hits from a bong at a party ... does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" I guess "growing up" as a culture would mean that the majority of Americans would have to kowtow to the radical libertarian demands for same-sex marriage, which is a big agenda for the "young turks" of the right for whom "the real respectability of a solid argument is preferable to the worthless respectability one gets" by advocating for "more humane" positions on some of the most hot-button social issues of the day.

There is, in sum, a pure cowardice to liberaltarianism that's frankly revolting. But more than that, there's a fundamental ideological incoherence, if not outright stupidity. Scott Payne writes that he's moved "to question the overall usefulness of political labels ... Is anyone ever really “conservative” or “liberal” or “libertarian” all the time, ad infinitum?" Perhaps it never occurred to Scott that to be ideological is by definition to evince a consistent or coherent pattern of beliefs across a range of political issues. If one is not coherent in such a way, it makes little sense to make the case for a new ideological paradigm, for at any time when inconvenient facts or uncomfortable moral truths intrude upon the groundings of a particulary ideological framework, one could simply jettison any pretension of intellectual consistenty, not to mention moral right.

And in fact, that's pretty much what these folks are doing. As Victor Davis Hanson argued last week with reference to the hysterical ideological jockeying of Andrew Sullivan:

I am absolutely baffled how and why someone like this can continue to be taken seriously: for weeks he peddled vicious, absolutely false rumors that Sarah Palin did not deliver her recent child. On the eve of Iraq, (he now seems to suggest that he was brainwashed by, yes, those sneaky neo-cons), he blathered on with blood and guts rhetoric, mixed with fawning references to Bush, and embraced apocalyptic threats, including the advocacy of using nuclear weapons against Saddam should the anthrax attacks be connected to him. He seems not merely to support any incumbent President, but to deify them, and can go from encomia about the rightwing Bush to praise of leftwing Obama without thought of contradiction. In the summer before 9/11 he was in the major news outlets, trying to save his career after accused (accurately as he confirmed) of trafficking anonymously in the sexual want ads as an HIV-positive would-be participant in the unmentionable. (In other words, someone who was caught in a well-publicized scandal about which he confirmed its main details, without much sensitivity to human fraility, helped to spread false information about a potential VP designed to ruin her reputation.) At some point, one would think such a suspect individual would have been ostracized by sane people—or indeed perhaps he already has.

This seems to be common among liberaltarians, or postmodern conservatives, however we might identify them. E.D. Kain gave the finger to a deep-bench of neoconservative writers whom he'd asked for analytical contributions - at no charge - when he deleted his online magazine, "NeoConstant," without the decency of a courtesy notification. Mark Thompson has the gall to applaud the strategic rationality of Hamas (with an obligatory attack on Israeli's actions as "self-defeating"), and then when questioned about his argument, he cowardly throws his hands up and pleads that "I honestly don't know - or pretend to know - the answer to the situation ..."

There are a lot more issues here to be hashed out (and certainly genuine libertarian ideology may have multiple strains). But in my view, it's frankly inconceivable in terms of developing a coherent ideology to see libertarian thinkers align with nihilist antiwar leftists in opposition to a forward-based and morally-robust American foreign policy, and then watch these same wannabe ideologues align with the neo-Stalinist forces of International ANSWER in protesting - whether on the street or online - the political and moral preferences of a majority of Californians who exercized their basic political rights to protect marriage traditionalism through the interest group-system and the ballot box.

Observing and monitoring the program of this unholy alliance of left-libertarianism has truly been one of the most eye-opening, and deeply troubling, experiences of my political lifetime.