RE: Nature of Ideology

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 03:15:35 MST

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    Damien writes

    > [Lee wrote]
    > > To [politicians], the opposition isn't to be hated; it's
    > > merely the total and conscious Opposition. They don't
    > > think anything like normal people at all.
    >
    > I'm not sure I buy that politicians are a breed distinct from ordinary people.
    > ... Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch being personal friends implies an acceptance
    > of the Other which I think includes legitimacy of the opposition.

    Quite right. It's as though they're professionals, and
    most of the rest of us are amateur partisans in comparison.
    Oh sure, a few real idealists get into office, but it
    still seems to me that they are a breed apart.

    > > I'm trying to unearth psychological differences between normal
    > > left leaning people and normal right leaning people.
    >
    > It feels like you're trying to do so to the disfavor of the left-leaning
    > people, whereas I would do so to the opposite. Perhaps that's just our own
    > biases showing.

    Yes, to a large degree, that's probably the case. It would
    be only natural that the asymmetries I spot would reflect
    well on me. :-)

    > Remember: unlike the far right, which was totally crushed
    > in 1945, the far left was never totally repudiated.

    > 2) I think the collapse of the Soviet Union was as repudiating
    > as the crushing of the far right in 1945.

    In the long run, perhaps so. But we're still too near the
    event, and Soviet atrocities have yet to receive the publicity
    that Nazi ones did. There have been no War Crimes trials, nor
    will there ever be (and probably for very good reason).

    > It wasn't total? Well, neither was the crushing. Turn
    > left and you see old Communist organizations. Turn right
    > and you see new fascist organizations -- Le Pen, Haider,
    > various neo-Nazis.

    Somehow, they seem pretty minor and tame to me.
    But then, if I lived in Europe, perhaps my view
    would be different.

    > Anti-Semitism isn't totally dead (even factoring out
    > anti-Zionism, mistakenly called anti-Semitism) and
    > rabid nationalism springs eternal.

    You see that the Jewish Question muddies the analysis.
    Today, the Jews get their best friends from the Right,
    which is quite different than before. All these factors
    substantiate, IMO, my thesis that socialism and communism
    have never received the utter demolition that fascism and
    nazism suffered.

    > I don't think Dan Rather has a useful mental pedigree going
    > [back] to Lenin, People's Republic of Berkeley notwithstanding.

    Yes, that's not implausible. Yet there is such a huge overlap
    between leftist and liberal causes that one constantly notices
    things they have in common.

    > > > And the right doesn't have this?
    > > Not in quite the same way. I'm excluding the shrill voices
    > > you're liable to pick up on the airwaves these days, from the
    > > right, and I'm excluding the religious types who really do
    > > believe that God's on their side. I'm focusing on a large
    >
    > !!!! You're excluding much of what I think of as the right!

    Point taken. But again, the shrillness of many of those voices
    stems directly from the lack of media representation they
    endured all through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. And the smug
    liberal reporters and analysts who still to this very day
    control the news at ABC, NBC, and CBS all that time tended
    to treat their stations as the Ministry of Truth.

    > > note the asymmetry. There is no way that "young conservatives"
    > > or whatever could have ever evolved the "Political Correctness"
    > > viewpoint. Inconceivable.
    >
    > Anti-patriotic? Un-American? Communist? Socialist? Conservatives
    > might not have evolved the "political correctness" label, but they have the
    > dogmatic suppression of dissent down pat, in my experience. Did you mean
    > something else?

    No, that's what I meant. These terms you're quoting are quite a
    mixed bag. "Anti-patriotic" is scarcely a meme. "Un-American"
    is two-edged today at best, and has been since 1954. And there
    are many people who consciously call themselves Communist or
    Socialist, though for the former not nearly so many as half
    a century ago.

    I'll admit that if the right ever gets a strangle-hold on the
    media to the degree that the liberals got it from the fifties
    through the eighties, they might evince the same behavior.
    But even then, the universities would still be under the control
    of their opposite numbers. One would practically have to grow
    up conservative, as I did, from 1960 to 1990, to feel the almost
    universal suppression in the media of conservative voices.

    But you've thereby forced me to amend my thesis. The asymmetry
    I detect in this discussion in terms of behavior and outlook
    between liberal and conservative is most likely due to historical,
    not personality or ideological forces. If conservatives had had
    a monopoly in the media and on the campuses for thirty years,
    then probably most features would be reversed.

    > > Yet the self-doubt of liberals is a reality. It comes from a
    > > number of sources. The fall of communism is the biggest one,
    >
    > Whereas I'd say the self-doubt of liberals comes from the Enlightenment, from
    > scientific thinking. You're supposed to doubt yourself, or at least be open
    > to questions about your ideas. And you certainly can't be certain of your
    > ideas because you don't *get* certainty, unless you're doing math.

    Well, even the movie "The Manchurian Candidate" made fun of
    "milk-toast liberal". Insofar as paying lip service to
    openness and freedom of expression, I can't fault the liberals
    there. But seeing how repressive towards conservatives they
    often turn out to be, e.g. on university campuses, or inside
    the media (read Goldberg's book), sometimes it's seldom more
    than lip service. But on this score, I'll hastily concede that
    if a lot of people like O'Reilly or Savage ever got the influence
    that Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite had, it would probably be
    worse.

    > Take me, for example. I used to be pretty libertarian; I've been turning
    > leftwards economically, based on what I consider the evidence. Leftward
    > meaning social safety net, public funding of education and infrastructure
    > and research, the usual mixed economy stuff.

    That's actually shocking. Do you think that you understand the
    key role of **incentives** in economics? Do you appreciate the
    absolutely key role historically of private property, and how
    *any* weakening of the protection of private property goes hand
    in hand with increasing poverty and diminution of individual
    rights?

    > But I had doubts as a libertarian, and I have doubts now as a
    > liberal, just because economic issues are so complex, and my
    > economist father taught me not to take economic theory too
    > literally or simplistically.

    Well, good. The traditional economists like Samuelson are
    horribly embarrassed (or should be) by the way things have
    turned out. Economics simply cannot be understood IMO without
    grounding it in private property; yet the role of property
    was practically ignored last century. If you can possibly
    spare the time, I cannot recommend to you any book more than
    "The Noblest Triumph", by Tom Bethell. So much history right
    up to the present time becomes very clear when an analysis of
    the relation between individual rights and private property
    is conducted.

    > More generally, there's this value of tolerance (or "otherness" cf. Brin),
    > which I associate with liberalism, but I could grant to the better
    > conservatives too.

    Thanks. And I will grant your point here too.

    > It wasn't in the Soviet Union, and it's not in the rabid religious
    > right, and it's at best confused in the politically correct crowd.

    Yes.

    > But there's this idea that everyone counts, everyone should be
    > listened to, if briefly, no one should be condemned out of hand.
    > And I think is what I meant when I first brought up liberal self-
    > doubt. Liberals as I see them have trouble cohesively keeping
    > out the Other, or accepting doing so.

    That sounds exactly right to me. In fact, that's not entirely
    to the good, especially when it comes to "keeping out the Other"
    when the Other is a foreign adversary (e.g. the Soviet Union or
    Saddam Hussein) bent on one's destruction. You've articulated
    very well this tolerance, which has its bright side, I gladly
    concede, but its dark side as well.

    > For the record, I was raised by liberals, went libertarian for a long time,
    > and most of the people I know wander around the liberal-libertarian political
    > space. On the left I speak from experience. People from the right I don't
    > experience much, except in the media and politics, where they scare me.

    Well, the next couple of decades are going to be interesting
    times, ideologically speaking. Stranger bedfellows than we
    are probably in the making.

    Lee



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