There are enormous, almost insoluble problems with today’s political babbling. I won’t call it “discourse,” because it’s hard to talk over the screams of “RACISM” and “SOCIALISM” coming from talking heads on both sides of the political spectrum.
Neither the right nor the left holds a respectable worldview. The right harbors some basically good instincts: man is flawed; there are rational limits to politics; there is a moral order that transcends man’s whims and errors.
Yet it nourishes itself on the paltry political ramblings of Republican polemicists who, in turn, merely regurgitate the news as reported by the major newspapers, all of which have strong statist leanings.
After President Obama won the election, they paused briefly for some deep yet inconclusive self-examination but quickly abandoned this attitude in their rush to condemn the new President for continuing the very same policies they lauded under President George W. Bush’s reign.
They are almost all bluster.
An opposition as despicable as the left should bring out the most robust, most intellectually intimidating arguments of the right.
While liberals are sharpening once-normal words into throwing knives to flick at conservatives and anarcho-capitalists at the slightest provocation, the right should be calmly reaching into the depths of its greatest thinkers’ works to draw out the now-obscure truths and expose the forgotten fallacies of the old Progressive and socialist movements.
One of the left’s justices said it best: sunlight is the best disinfectant. Scrubbing away liberals’ illusion of credibility is perfectly possible if the right rejects their absurd presuppositions.
Unfortunately, conservatives have come to share many of the left’s assumptions, especially the belief that government is capable of exemplifying and enforcing morality.
Most Republican politicians still believe some compromise with the left is possible, that liberals are only doing what they think is best, and that they, like all people, are basically good, just genuinely mistaken.
This has never been true. What kind of opponent precariously balances his case on emotional drivel and then reviles anyone who has the audacity to present a logical counter-point?
The right doesn’t understand. The left has always sought power. It does not search for the truth, for it sees itself as its own Alpha and Omega, its own first and last.
How convenient it must be for those who believe their new-age fashions to be eternal, immutable truths.
Not all liberals so foolishly ignore reality. Leftist constitutional scholar Raoul Berger once remarked that his predilections were often at war with his conclusions.
He eviscerated President Richard Nixon’s rationale for his executive power grabs in two separate books, and for a while, he enjoyed praise from academia and the intelligentsia.
The next book he wrote, however, dismantled the rotten legal superstructure built atop the spurious Fourteenth Amendment. He was immediately shunned.
But he didn’t stop. He kept writing, despite ire he drew from like-minded scholars. The right needs to model this kind of intellectual honesty.
Unfortunately, conservatives have done themselves an immense disservice by excluding their best thinkers and their allies from daily debate.
How often do Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh cite the brilliant polymath Murray Rothbard? For years his invaluable works were ignored.
Or how often, for that matter, do they cite the men who preceded them, some of the first prominent intellectuals to refute the left (William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review, and Albert Jay Nock, author of numerous books including Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, to name a couple)?
Calling everyone who doesn’t toe the Republican party line a kook cuts conservatives off from a boundless well of arguments.
The right also needs to stop posturing as anti-spending while it embraces foreign, undeclared wars, the central banking system, Social Security and Medicare, and the other monstrosities foisted onto the American people.
It should rail against the establishment only after it has shaken off its doublethink, its mannerisms and its twitches.
Certain watchwords liberals use to identify their enemies should have no effect on the right, nor should it use those words to condemn any liberals.
The right needn’t play petty games with the liberals.
Getting serious will take a little effort, but it’ll be worth it.
Samantha Stanko • Apr 22, 2010 at 6:11 am
“liberals are sharpening once-normal words into throwing knives to flick at conservatives”
Notice how you use words like ‘liberals’ and ‘leftists’ derogatorily? Throughout everything you’ve written for The Campus?
I FLICK MY LIBERAL THROWING KNIVES IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION
ps–Will, your argument was very coherent and well-written.
Will • Apr 9, 2010 at 4:33 am
So, as I understand it, you wish for the Republican party to cease engaging in “petty” arguments with the liberal intelligentsia. Well, let me counter this argument with a few quotes, which need no citation:
– “An opposition as despicable as the left”
– “While liberals are sharpening once-normal words into throwing knives”
– “Scrubbing away liberals’ illusion of credibility”
– “The left has always sought power.”
There are three things that these four quotes have in common. First, they are all from this article. Secondly, they are all unexplained and unfounded. Why? Because, thirdly, they are all in contrast with the message of the very article they come from.
If the purpose of this article is to urge the right towards a more intellectual debate, you have missed the target.
In what ways are the ideologies of the left “despicable”? It is not a matter of whether or not I agree with you; it is a matter of hypocrisy. There is no explanation for this buckshot accusation, and what’s more, it perpetuates the image of childish barbs from the right that you seek to destroy.
“The left has always sought power” instead of the “truth”? Well, what is the “truth”? Furthermore, what political group has ever shied away from obtaining power? I’ll answer my own rhetorical question: none. Liberals, conservatives, moderates, socialists, capitalists, fascists, communists, they all seek power. And political movements should strive for this ephemeral concept of truth? No. When in a position to make policy changes and political progress, the “truth” is whatever is most convenient for any party.
This “illusion of credibility” that is claimed to exist (by the way, another example of hypocritical rhetoric) is no illusion. Less than two years ago, the “despicable”, power-mad liberals won not only a majority in the U.S. House and in the U.S. Senate, but a majority in the U.S. Presidency. Like it or not, the liberal agenda was voted on, and it was approved. It’s a bit too late to question the credibility of something which was bestowed credibility by popular mandate
Again, if I may dwell on specific phrasings in the article, these “once-normal words” that liberals now use to hurt their rivals? What are they? Please, tell me. I want to fully understand your point of view.
I’m not the sharpest spoon in the cellar. I doubt my argument above is as coherent as I would like it to be. Do not take any of these comments as a personal attack; just as you target what you believe to be the morally corrupt, ineffective left, I target what I believe to be the morally corrupt, ineffective right. Hopefully, I have avoided the petty games politics invites, just as I hope you will in the future. But if I have not, well, darn. I tried. I appreciate your opinions, and ask you to keep writing; I enjoy the argumentative spirit it brings forth.
Jane • Apr 7, 2010 at 11:06 pm
“Calling everyone who doesn’t toe the Republican party line a kook cuts conservatives off from a boundless well of arguments.”
Is that not what you did in the first half of this essay?
“This has never been true. What kind of opponent precariously balances his case on emotional drivel and then reviles anyone who has the audacity to present a logical counter-point?”
Your arguments are full of flowery rhetoric, but I fail to see any real argument in them. What makes this claim more worthwhile than an identical claim from the opposite side of the political spectrum? Such an argument would be just as fallacious as this one, but you would only recognize it because of a close-minded system of judging everything by its position on an arbitrary, wide-reaching political scale. What do you call “emotional drivel”? What are these vague “logical counterpoints”? Why should emotion be discounted in the first place?
Please, I urge you to stop thinking in terms of “left” and “right”, because those things aren’t true beliefs.