Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner is half of the Becker-Posner blog. Their conversation at the moment has to do with the state of conservatism. Judge Posner has some unkind things to say about the current state of intellectual conservatism. But, the upside for this way of thinking is that it had largely succeeded by the time it fizzled out. Friedman and Buckley were replaced, most recently, by Sarah Palin and “Joe” the “Plumber.”
My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.
I’ve bolded my favorite bit of that passage. “Substituting will for intellect.” To me, this immediately calls to mind that conversation Ron Suskind had with a Bush aide:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
And, really, there is probably a lot of that willing rather than analyzing to be found in the roots of the recent economic collapse. The Masters of the Universe (Wall Street edition) sought to impose their will for fun and profit, reality be damned. But, as Ms. Rand (along with others before her) pointed out, “A” = “A,” and eventually reality has a way of crashing the party.
Quote from above Posner article:
“believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.â€
That quote is a definition of ‘pragmatism’. Pragmatism is easily criticized for being inconsistent with ‘core values’ and as Sean Hannity says of anyone leaning liberal, is a motivation based on ‘political expediency’,absent core values .
Then the reasoning continues that the Republicans have fallen from grace for not being consistent to conservative core values.And so far they’re looking for good-looking fluent spokesmen rather examining their failed platform.
Take Obama’s recent ‘flip-flop’ on showing/not showing torture pictures reportedly because military leaders warned him that it would put American soldiers under jeopardy to retaliation and would be a huge propaganda bonanza for anti-american insurgency in various places overseas.Pictures never go away.Liberals are furious with Obama over this.
Pragmatic evaluation isn’t expediency unless there are no core values basis in the evaluation,and that should be Obama’s lesson on this decision.
I would think that this Obama ‘flip -flop’ will be very popular with most Americans,when they think about how Obama arrived at it..
Is pragmatism a liberal mindset or are there are conservative pragmatists? Pragmatism seems to be a negative concept to conservatives ,at least admitting to it as a basis for changing positons.
Ive always been pragmatic myself:that is evaluate to figure out how success would be defined ,taking into consideration whom and what I had to deal with.But teaching lends itself easily to pragmatic thinking.
I predict that after Obama’s term(s) core-valued pragmatism will be the new model for political leadership.But I’m not sure Republicans will come along that road.
One of the issues with pragmatic solutions is identifying the problem to be solved. If people can’t agree on what constitutes a problem that ought to be solved, pragmatism will be of little use.
Probably I’m straying far afield here, but there was discussion on an NPR program with an author who had written about American views on religion. His grandfather was a hard line evangelical preacher of the “life is to be endured as a test before the glorious hereafter” line of religion. He was of the “life is our reward, make the most of it” school of thought.
When, for example, “let’s create heaven-on-earth” bumps into “earth is God’s testing ground prior to life after death,” probably the two camps won’t agree on what a pragmatic solution might look like.
Doug said “If people can’t agree on what constitutes a problem that ought to be solved, pragmatism will be of little use.”
Some people, I call them “problem-solvers” (LOL my husband is one and our condo association pres is another), don’t even stop to think about what the real problem is. They see what they think is a problem and go ahead and fix that, but it’s really only a symptom, so the underlying problem still exists and they’re stymied about why the solution didn’t work.
Sometimes this gets expensive.
Pragmatism is best seen as a leadership quality.
The political debate now is pragmatism vs ideology,with Obama gradually becoming known as a president who evaluates a situation and then makes a pragmatic decison.Republicans are still hard-core ideologues.
Up to now most of the blanket criticism of Obama from the right is that he is a LW ideologue, and he’ll enslave us with socialism.
But even now Obama is becoming somewhat unpredictable,and that’s disconcerting for many who voted for him.
Republicans especially are applauding his recent ruling on not releasing torture pictures.
So even if we disagree on solutions it’s a vast improvement to start by defining a problem,and discuss on that level,rather than blindly follow an ideology, while scapegoating the opposition,whose ideology we abhor..
But Obama has to maintain his high positive personal approval, or pragmatism will undermine him fast,just as ideology did Bush.
I’ve found that generally, the ‘pragmatic’ politician is doing what the person who applauds wants done.
Was Bush an ideological president? Those who disagreed with what he was doing certainly thought so. Ask disaffected conservatives, though. They’ll tell you he was a pragmatic politician. See: Medicare Prescription Drug Program. Even his war on terror as defining item of tenure. He didn’t campaign on it. He reacted to an event. That’s pragmatic action, my friend.
Mike Kole,
One measure of pragmatism is how much your base support is upset and how much it applauds.
Part of the Bush ideology was this so-called Clinton policy of ‘triangulation’where the opposition is paid off with token support so their politics were in effect short-circuited. That’s what Dems previously did to Repubs on welfare reform,as an example.
Pragmatism should include evaluation and pre-assessment of actions and shouldn’t be just a reaction to an event.If a decision is purely political,then that should be the basis of judgment.That’s always up for discussion.
How Obama will be judged on the basis of his pragmatism is far from clear.
My judgment on Bush is that he was always reliable to conservative social issues,and the social conservatives were the bedrock of Bush conservatism.The economic conservatives got screwed, to be sure.
Forget, please, “conservatism.” It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman†Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke†about himself and God.