Partisan Mindset (III)

By Daniel Larison • November 30, 2010, 2:58 PM

Ross has qualified the claims he made in his column, and explains how he thinks partisanship affects political opinions in a new post. He writes:

So the great T.S.A. debate doesn’t show that conservatives are about to repudiate everything the Bush administration did on national security….What it does show, though, is that conservatives are increasingly open to criticizing security policies that are specific to Obama from a libertarian rather than a national-security perspective (something you could also see happening a bit in the debate over assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki), if the libertarian argument offers the more plausible and popular case.

That makes some sense. Even so, it is worth pointing out that conservative critics of the executive’s claim that it has unreviewable power to order the death of U.S. citizens on the basis of secret evidence have been relatively few and far between. The al-Awlaki case has been one where the Obama administration has expanded on the power grabs of the Bush administration in a genuinely dangerous and destructive way, the libertarian argument against this power grab is the only plausible one there is, and yet for the most part there has not been any real backlash, not even from a “hypocritical and inconsistent opposition.” What that tells me is that most conservatives are not unduly concerned about Obama claiming powers to order the deaths of citizens without due process or judicial review, but many seem very agitated that they must go through an obnoxious airport ritual that they and the TSA agents and everyone else knows has nothing to do with thwarting terrorism. Consistency may be overrated, but one would think that the priorities would be the other way around.

If the partisan mindset were so very powerful, surely the executive’s claim to have unreviewable assassination power should generate more pushback than obnoxious scanning devices at airports. The assassination power claim is a new issue, and one that has far more frightening implications and potential for abuse than anything that the TSA is doing, but it goes largely unnoticed or even wins applause from the right. To make sense of this, it helps to compare it to mainstream conservative critiques of the war in Afghanistan, which usually take aim at its “nation-building” aspect. These critics are frustrated with nation-building as wasteful, but remain basically supportive of nation-destroying: the former is time-consuming, expensive, and complicated, while the latter can be quick, relatively “cheap” and “easy” and largely painless (at least for most Americans). Likewise, the TSA procedures are time-consuming, inconvenient, obnoxious and more directly affect people we know, and the other issue is remote and mainly affects other people. Whatever virtue there is in having a “hypocritical and inconsistent opposition” to act as a check on the concentration of power in the executive and in Washington would seem to be lost if the opposition can’t bring itself to protest against the truly egregious power grabs by the executive.

10 Responses to Partisan Mindset (III)

cfountain72 says:

November 30, 2010 at 4:06 pm

I don’t understand. I mean, they gave it a nice Orwellian euphemism (‘enhanced security screening’) which seemed to work just fine for making torture, errr, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ acceptable. What’s the big deal?

There may be something here though. If the pat downs as a result of our dysfunctional foreign policy are causing consternation, imagine if we actually forced Americans to raise the taxes necessary to cover the costs of that same dysfunctional foreign policy? I’d love to see some line items on our tax forms…something like:

Saddam Hussein Removal Fee…………………….$4,200
Surge Charge…………………………………………..$ 950
Afghanistan Poppy Replacement Program…….. $ 125
Nationbuilding Tax…………………………………….$1,915
The PNAC Tax (aka The Global Constabulary)…$1,100

Maybe that would be enough to get folks to start scratching their heads? After all, just like the bumper sticker says, Freedom Ain’t Free!

Peace be with you.
kiraisjustice says:

November 30, 2010 at 9:50 pm

My main gripe with the TSA thing is that simply changing our foreign policy so that we no longer give billions of dollars in foreign aid and sell billions of dollars in high tech weaponry to foreign dictators would prevent so many radical foreign extremists from wanting to kill us in the first place would be a much more cost effective strategy in the long run.

That, and the fact that so many liberals who raged against the Patriot Act seem to have no problem with the TSA, while the majority of conservatives who are raging against the TSA have no problem with the Patriot Act.

http://kiraisjustice.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/his-peacemaker-will-see-no-crime/
beej says:

December 1, 2010 at 12:30 am

I tune in to Eunomia week after week because I have great respect for your reasoning and analytical chops, DL. But I remain puzzled at your continued disappointment at and your professed inability to understand the lack of political principle from the right or from Republicans. You continually point out instances of their hypocrisies and power-hungry destructiveness, and yet you can’t bring yourself to say that the liberals have it right, or at least more correct, on this or that issue — let alone that this kind of “more correct” stance is in fact consistent with liberal principles and that maybe your readers should be more supportive of liberal legislators and policies. Instead, you seem to argue that the right or Republicans are not being Real Conservatives when they’re being pigheaded.

For instance, those most critical of President Obama’s assertion of the right to assassinate at least one American are in fact almost uniformly the most liberal sector of the American political spectrum. Now it might be possible for you to argue that these critics are defending a “conservative” principle, but doing so is not only unfair, it’s actively misleading. Limiting the executive’s power to kill citizens is simply not a principle that by its nature is more conservative than liberal. Historically, in fact, it is liberals who have done the most to advance the practices and principles of due process — so much so that conservatives are continually asserting that liberals have gone too far.

Look, there are plenty of things conservatives can argue that liberals have wrong — affirmative action, immigration, health care, energy policy. And I’m eager to hear your arguments. But if you manage to convince me my lefty position about them is wrong, then I’ll admit that the conservatives have it right. I won’t try to say that your more correct argument is consistent with Real Liberal principles and that’s why it’s the right thing to do.
tbraton says:

December 1, 2010 at 6:15 am

cfountain72, you left out one major item: No Afghan Left Behind Tax (teaching the 80% of Afghans who are illiterate how to read) $5,000

Of course, we could simply lower our aim and try to teach Afghans how to read at the level of the average U.S. high school student, which would lower the cost to $1,000.
Daniel Larison says:

December 1, 2010 at 8:04 am

“You continually point out instances of their hypocrisies and power-hungry destructiveness, and yet you can’t bring yourself to say that the liberals have it right, or at least more correct, on this or that issue — let alone that this kind of “more correct” stance is in fact consistent with liberal principles and that maybe your readers should be more supportive of liberal legislators and policies. Instead, you seem to argue that the right or Republicans are not being Real Conservatives when they’re being pigheaded.”

To take the last point first, I still believe that a sane, principled, humane conservatism is antithetical to many of the things mainstream conservatives and Republicans have been advocating and doing. I object to what they’re doing in part because I still consider myself a conservative, and I see few or none of the principles I hold at work on a large part of the right today. Maybe a temperamental and philosophical conservatism can’t break the hold that ideological “conservatism” has on the right, but I keep hoping that it can.

On civil liberties and foreign policy, I thought I had been acknowledging for some time that civil libertarians on the left and progressive realists have generally been getting more things right, or I should say that they have often been correct on the same things as civil libertarians on the right and traditional conservative realists. I take for granted that left-libertarians and progressives are coming to these conclusions on the basis of different ideas, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.

As for policies, what is the “liberal” policy on engaging Iran? Unless I am mistaken, the “liberal” policy is to pursue sustained engagement with Iran and halt the fruitless sanctions approach to put the U.S. on the path to normalized relations with Iran. That also happens to be the policy I have been advocating for years, so I don’t see it as simply a “liberal” policy, because all of it is entirely consistent with what a traditional conservative or right-libertarian could support. I hesitate to identify policy positions with these labels, especially when it concerns foreign policy, because such labeling tends to shut down critical thinking rather than encourage it. Once most people on the right became convinced that opposing the war in Iraq was something that no real conservative could do, there was nothing else to talk about. As we’re talking about groupthink and partisanship, that is a far better example of how it works: conservative leaders identify a policy as conservative regardless of the merits of the policy, and arguments are constructed afterwards to try to justify that. What I try to do is to argue for policies on their merits, and that means avoiding labels that prevent people from hearing the argument.

When it comes to politicians, I can’t honestly encourage people to support politicians that I would not support myself in an election.
Daniel Larison says:

December 1, 2010 at 8:16 am

“Limiting the executive’s power to kill citizens is simply not a principle that by its nature is more conservative than liberal. Historically, in fact, it is liberals who have done the most to advance the practices and principles of due process — so much so that conservatives are continually asserting that liberals have gone too far.”

The conservatism I’m talking about is rooted in the Anglo-American Country tradition, which is deeply hostile to concentrating unchecked power in the hands of a few. The Country tradition is strongly against centralized power and the abuses it can create. Jeffersonians are the American heirs of this tradition, and that includes many American conservatives, so it is not the case that supporting a strong executive and weakening constitutional protections are by their “nature” more conservative.
Elvis Elvisberg says:

December 1, 2010 at 1:17 pm

What it does show, though, is that conservatives are increasingly open to criticizing security policies that are specific to Obama from a libertarian rather than a national-security perspective (something you could also see happening a bit in the debate over assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki), if the libertarian argument offers the more plausible and popular case.

Shorter Ross: because conservatives have no principles, they will grasp at anything they can find to hurl at the president, regardless of whether or not it conflicts with what they said five minutes before.

It’s a fair enough point on his part. After all, other than the need to reduce government revenue regardless of context, is there anything that might be considered a “Republican belief” consistent over the past 15 years?
BarryD says:

December 1, 2010 at 2:24 pm

“That, and the fact that so many liberals who raged against the Patriot Act seem to have no problem with the TSA, while the majority of conservatives who are raging against the TSA have no problem with the Patriot Act”

Please go read liberal blogs, for a starter. Or the ACLU’s website.
BarryD says:

December 1, 2010 at 2:26 pm

cfountain72: (re – TSA searches)

“I don’t understand. I mean, they gave it a nice Orwellian euphemism (‘enhanced security screening’) which seemed to work just fine for making torture, errr, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ acceptable. What’s the big deal?”

Because it happens to **them**, not ‘others’ (if you know what I mean). They feel that assassinations will be carried out mainly on the sort of American ‘citizens’ that right-wingers would like to kill (and ordered mainly by GOP presidents).
conradg says:

December 2, 2010 at 2:00 am

You’re making a false equivalency between the TSA measures and the potential killing of Al-Alawi. Whether you think Al-Alawi is a valid military target or not, he’s not in any jurisdication which would allow for a case to be made in court against him. He’s deliberately operating from a lawless area of Yemen precisely in order to avoid that kind of determination. So striking against him and his Yemeni co-conspirators does not set a precedent for assassinating Americans anywhere and anytime the President so decides. So it’s not surprising that conservatives think it’s well within the powers of the military to act in this case, if it suits them. It’s not the same at all as supporting the right of the president to kill any American he thinks is a threat to our national security, only those who have openly taken up a militant cause against us and flee to a known terrorist refuge to operate outside the law.

The TSA matter is entirely different, in that we are talking about security procedures that take place well within ordinary civil society, even at the heart of the ability to travel freely in our own country. Of course, the hypocrisy here is that if the TSA were doing this under a Bush administration, they would be calling all critics of these policies traitors who want America to lose the war on terror. Their opposition is entirely political and opportunistic.

The worse situation is the Wikileaks case, where conservatives are openly calling for the assassination of an individual for “treason”, when he isn’t even an American citizen, isn’t involved in any terrorist cause, isn’t guilty of any crime, and is merely making openly available information that is given to him by others. If you want to know where conservatives stand on the national security state, simply examine what is being advocated by conservatives against someone who has no violent ambitions whatsoever against the US or its citizens, but who simply opposes our own lawless actions overseas and wants them exposed to the light of day. I haven’t heard a single conservative defend Assauge, and many calling for him to be murdered by the CIA – and not in some lawless desert hideaway, but in Sweden or Europe.