The American Conservative

R. Justin Shepherd brings to our attention this beyond-parody ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition. (Click for PDF, suitable for framing.) Beware Obama — his views are just like Buchanan’s! Ah, if only…

According to Kathryn Jean Lopez, Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity went well. “She did fine. Did herself no harm.” In other news, Edgar Bergen’s interview with Charle McCarthy also went well.

Tim Graham of the media/whiner organization NewsBusters complains that Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post positively reviewed Andrew Bacevich‘s Limits of Power and referred to the author as “conservative.” Graham writes, “Kaiser’s rave review touted Bacevich as a ‘self-described conservative,’ but that description stretches credulity when an author is the darling of the radical-left media, as Bacevich is right now. Kaiser’s review very neatly describes how much Bacevich’s argument sounds just like standard left-wing media boilerplate.”

Graham’s complaint is that Bacevich doesn’t chant “USA!!, USA!!!, USA!!!!”; so he can’t be a conservative. Instead, according to Graham, he says:

2. President Bush is horrible, and the Congress is worse than wimpy in opposing his “imperial presidency.”

Bacevich’s political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush’s failed presidency, though “his policies have done untold damage.” Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. “No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good,” he writes. “The chief…function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members.”

I can’t imagine a conservative ever complaining that the government of the founders has disappeared or ever questioning the motives of the members of Congress. But let’s give him this: If Tim Graham is a conservative then Andrew Bacevich isn’t. And if Graham is typical of what passes for conservative these days, the movement is even more intellectually bankrupt than I had previously thought.

P.S. Graham also says that Bacevich favors a draft. He shoud read page 152 where a subhead reads, “Why the Draft if Not a Good Idea and Won’t Happen.” Also, on page 168 he writes: “America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller—that is, more modest—foreign policy.”

I know I am not the only one to notice the recent wave of neocon attacks on Sarah Palin coming from David Frum, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer.  They all make essentially the same point, i.e. that she is not experienced enough to become president.  Brooks predictably has the most sophisticated argument, that experience is needed to condition one to act prudently in a crisis situation.  That assertion may or may not be true, but it enables the neocons to overtly support Palin while simultaneously undermining her.

If it were anyone but the neocons one might think that the three pundits are speaking up for the good of the nation, suggesting that Palin might actually be a bad choice.  But as neocons characteristically are always selling a carefully coordinated and calibrated message that is intended to further their group interest, something else must be at work here.  McCain is and always has been their man and Palin reportedly has been receiving intensive briefings both from the neocons on the McCain staff and also from the stalwarts at the American Enterprise Institute.   It has been suggested that the neocons have been unhappy with some of Palin’s responses in the briefing sessions on foreign policy issues and there is some concern that she might not be “reliable” if something were to happen to McCain.  There have been behind closed doors meetings at AEI involving foreign policy heavies like Pletka and Brooks discussing what to do about the Palin problem. 

Does that mean the neocons are covering both bets in the upcoming elections?  Possibly.  Bill Kristol is still praising Palin but The Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal have been somewhat less than enthusiastic.  Recall also that Kristol was finding a lot to like in Democratic hawk Hillary some months back and that the neocons in general don’t really care about social or domestic issues like abortion or immigration.  They might be quite comfortable with an Obama administration in which Democratic hawk Biden is calling the shots on foreign policy guided by the likes of Dennis Ross, neocon-lite.  The neocons might now believe that a Democratic administration is their best bet for a sustainable foreign policy that they would be comfortable with and which would allow them to continue to play a major role.

Some in clandestine companies combine;
Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line;
With air and empty names beguile the town;
And raise new credits first, then cry them down;
Divide the empty nothing into shares,
And set the crowd together by the ears.
–Daniel Defoe

Shana, they bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let ‘em crash!
–Airplane!

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
–REM

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
–Lenin

Correct Vladimir Ilyich above to read “debauch capital”–and it needn’t be the subversive effort of committed revolutionaries. Those who’ve debauched capital, replacing it with purely theoretic value dependent on nothing more concrete than faith in the inexhaustibility of greed, are, or imagine themselves to be, the most fervent capitalists of all. It takes either sociopathic oblivion or absolute faith in the infallibility of our system to do it this kind of damage; anything else leaves room for those undervalued resources, doubt and modesty–room for decency to latch on. Every calamity is particular to its time, and our time is peculiar for celebrating confidence as its own justification, not to be contingent upon anything so limiting as truth or coherence. We’ve made a faith of self-confidence and a superstition of positive thinking. Odd for such irreligious times; or not so much odd as inevitable.

But don’t chalk it up to the system or society; chalk it up to human nature. These competing means of ordering societies and economies that constitute the continuum from communism to capitalism are all just strategies to harness the power and mitigate the corruptions of human nature. Even our creativity has a dark underside, revealed whenever some human endeavor goes belly-up. Of course this sounds vaguely heretical to most on the right still, like suggesting tax rates can be too low or American power can be misguided. That a system is better than another doesn’t make it perfect (or, to put it another way, an end in itself). But the belief in the perfectibility of systems–like the perfectibility of man–is a thing that will always be with us, playing out its familiar cycle of enthusiasm and folly, ruin and revolution.

Our curious system of selectively unrestrained and selectively rigged capitalism has become capitalism sans capital–degenerate, you might say. Traders (if this is an accurate term–things have gotten so involved that one can’t be sure) are shamans of a sort, impressing everyone with the intricacy of their incantations. They bear a certain resemblance to postmodern literary theorists. The more opaque and dense their constructs the more successful they are, or were.

In fact these folks aren’t so different from each other; they form a class dominant in some ideally situated corner of society or the economy, and from this privileged perch leverage their influence. They are, above all, dismissive of limits and tradition, seeing them as outrageously repressive. They each create their own closed, self-referential systems, forbidding to those uninitiated in their arcane language. They share a similar disdain for both physical reality and conceptual morality, leaving them curiously untethered, floating in the ether of their theoretic gases. They are in denial of nature, appreciating it with neither a religious nor empirical point of view.

Of course if one denies the existence of nature, he denies the existence of human nature, and comes to believe that human behavior is infinitely malleable and predictable, if one only devises a sufficiently exhaustive theory of it. Funny how right and left meet out there, around their respective bends.

I’m always happy when he calls—this old Alinksy-ite who likes Ron Paul and bylines in both The Nation and The American Conservative. (We don’t spend much time worrying about labels since we’re scarcely sure how to characterize ourselves anymore. Ideologues annoy, realists appeal. That provides plenty of common ground.)

This morning’s conversation was like countless others: animated and ranging. But it was somber, too, as we sifted together through the rubble of the single largest bankruptcy in American history and tried to discern what a small magazine might say. We chatted through credit default swaps and the role of an unfunded war, whither AIG and the repeal of Glass-Stiegel. Is it 1929 again? (He suspects worse.) Is “too big to fail” the new brass ring? (It looks that way.) Isn’t it curious that the leading advocates of a balanced budget are now House Dems? And oh yeah, aren’t we glad no one got around to privatizing Social Security?

He asked what conservatives were saying, and I detailed the terrain. Bailout is a bad word because government intervention is something liberals like—unless it’s Republican intervention in which case we’re ridding the world of evil or testing kids smarter or ensuring that anyone can buy a house. At the moment, the glorious market is just working out a kink or two. (Never mind the traditionalists and their sentimental attachment to social order and stability. They aren’t real conservatives because they want the terrorists to win.) Truth is, I confessed, many (most) on the Right were in denial—it’s always morning in America; this is but a “mental recession”—until the headlines wouldn’t let them. But there’s a silver lining: now John McCain has something new to reform. Cue applause for his promise to “restore trust in government,” as if devotion to Washington were a conservative value.

After we hung up, I scouted the blogosphere to see who else might be thinking beyond the party line. Since lively economic writing is a rare bird, I ventured off the beaten path. After a few fruitless stops, I tried Culture 11. (We’ve decided that would be a better name for a German nightclub than a vaguely conservative website, but it’s offbeat (unfocused?), not hostile (unexpected!), and as hip as an operation funded by Steve Forbes and founded by Bill Bennett can possibly be.) I found the “commerce” button and clicked, hoping for an unorthodox take on the Nightmare on Wall Street. I was directed to a single lead story … written by TAC associate editor Michael Dougherty … about pricey haircuts for men. These aren’t just any cuts: we’re talking “lessons on how to enjoy being properly pampered, one snip at a time.” Money quote: “Across from me, someone was paying nearly five hundred dollars for a package that included a hot shave, a manicure and pedicure, and a series of languorous face washes that seem to have pleasantly immobilized him.” Of all the crisis commentary I’ve read over the last couple of weeks, this may be the most apropos comment of all.

PS My morning caller, amused by the “community organizer” dust-up, reports that the designation was concocted to make Alinksy’s radicals seem maximally innocuous to the IRS. The old Marxist couldn’t have imagined he was writing punchlines for Sarah Palin.

The Republican spin on the collapsing stock market: it’s the fault of “coastal elites.”

There will be a silver lining — golden, actually — to the hellish hurricane of election day if even one of the antiwar, sound-money candidates in North and South Carolina wins. These are practically the only races this season worth caring about. In the Tar Heel State, Ron Paul-endorsed Republican B.J. Lawson is taking on incumbent Democrat David Price. Lawson has a Constitution Day moneybomb coming up on Wednesday. Needless it say, it takes quite a lot of what the Federal Reserve fabricates to knock-off an incumbent. So I’ll be donating a few rapidly inflating reserve notes to the Lawson campaign at midweek, and you should too.

Meanwhile in South Carolina, Democrat Bob Conley is campaigning valiantly against John McCain’s Mini-Me, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. If “Grahamnesty’s” op-ed with Joe Lieberman baiting the Russian bear raised your ire, donating to Conley’s campaign is a good way to blow off steam — and to cause Lindsey some pain.

Jeremy Lott writes:

Shorter Clark Stooksbury – Monday, September 15, 2008 @ 11:53:46 AM

Until Sarah Palin hugs an ANWR caribou while a bird of peace alights on her shoulder, and embraces Barack Obama’s tax plan, I’m still going to hate her.

Not exactly. But I will admit that my standard for an acceptable running mate for John McCain would exclude everyone acceptable to John McCain and most Republicans. What gets me is, who would want shorter Clark Stooksbury?

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