The American Conservative

The Republicans are not going to win the Presidential Election in 2012 or 2016. Think of anyone realistically likely to win the nomination, and that is just as well. President Palin, anyone? President Beck? Their likelihood of taking back control of Congress is also barely worth considering.

But a party is not a country or a church. Just find another one. In the United States, that is easy to do. All you have to do is change your registration. If you live in deep red Congressional District within a state where the Republican primary is closed, then register as a Republican. It would be crazy not to. But anywhere else, why not register as a Democrat? Isn’t it just as crazy not to do that? If not, why not?

You would find, and make, yourselves part of a new coalition. But leave aside universal healthcare for the time being. Do paleocons have any problem with fair trade agreements? With the repeal of much of the USA PATRIOT Act? With a complete end to the neocon war agenda? With strict campaign finance reform? With a crackdown on corporate influence generally, and on corporate welfare in particular? With tax cuts for the poor? Even living wage laws, and the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in collective bargaining, could be lived with in principle. Couldn’t they? Again, if not, why not? Okay, so there would be abortion, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. But the Democrats are split on that anyway (increasingly so on abortion, in fact), with Obama himself in favor of traditional marriage. Are all Republicans sound these issues, either? Hardly! You could and should be in there arguing for the prioritization of tax cuts for the poor, and huge savings from the ending of wars and from the slashing of corporate welfare, over direct increases in federal welfare spending, though also for the involvement of charities and churches in welfare provision, a proposal which would appeal to many existing black and other Democrats. And wouldn’t higher taxes on the very rich (who are often social liberals), like labor rights, depend on the specific proposals and circumstances? Not for the first time I ask, if not, why not?

Many believers in measures such as these have never been happy about same-sex marriage, or about, if not all abortion (and there are of course Democrats of that mind), then at least very late abortions, or social abortions, or eugenic abortions, or the sheer number of abortions, not least in black communities, and especially against the black male, who is now the victim of a triple genocide in the womb, on the streets and on the battlefield. They would leap at the chance of an alliance, not with rich liberals who often (not always, but often) display scant regard for the poor or for those on middle incomes, and who are frequently pro-war, but with you.

In the midst of–rightly–suggesting that Tom Ridge should have resigned as Director of Homeland Security if he believed his terror alerts were politically motivated, Kathryn Lopez of National Review remains neutral on his charges by declaring, “I wasn’t in the room.”

But Lopez didn’t have to be in the room to see that the administration was manipulating terror alerts–all she needed was some healthy skepticism and an ability to discern patterns. As Marcy Wheeler points out, all a person needs is simple empiricism to assess the terror alerts. Matching terror alerts to reports on which they were based shows the hyped-up charges administration officials were making. Apparently that’s too much to ask of National Review editors, though. They’ll shill for a Republican administration whatever the facts.

Good for the World Health Organization. Yes, it is heavily involved in abortion. But in that case, no one can accuse it of being a Vatican puppet when it advocates, as it does, Natural Family Planning.

And now it strongly cautions sufferers from HIV, tuberculosis or malaria to have nothing to do with homeopathy.

There can be no such thing as “complementary medicine” or “alternative medicine”. If it works, then it is just medicine. And it doesn’t work, then what is the point of it?

The current popularity of these things is, like so much else, the result of our culture’s having moved away from the uniquely Christian rejection of humanity’s otherwise universal concepts of eternalism (that the universe has always existed and always will), animism (that the universe is a living thing, an animal), pantheism (that the universe is itself the ultimate reality, God), cyclicism (that everything which happens has already happened in exactly the same form, and will happen again in exactly the same form, an infinite number of times) and astrology (that events on earth are controlled by the movements of celestial bodies).

Science cannot prove that these closely interrelated things are not the case; it simply has to presuppose their falseness, first established in thirteenth-century Paris when their Aristotelian expression was condemned at the Sorbonne specifically by ecclesial authority, and specifically by reference to the Biblical Revelation.

This is why science as we now understand the term never originated anywhere other than in Mediaeval Europe. And it is why science did not last, or flower as it might have done, in the Islamic world: whereas Christianity sees the rationally investigable order in the universe as reflecting and expressing the rationality of the Creator, the Qur’an repeatedly depicts the will of Allah as capricious.

By turning away from ecclesial authority’s articulation and protection of the Biblical Revelation, and by turning away from the Biblical Revelation itself, the civilisation that these things called into being has turned away from science and towards eternalism, animism, pantheism, cyclicism and astrology, to the extent that a few years ago a Doctorate of Science was awarded to François Mitterand’s astrologer by, of all institutions, the Sorbonne.

And eternalism, animism, pantheism, cyclicism and astrology, inseparable from each other, underlie, among so very much else, each and every form of “alternative medicine” or “complementary medicine”, contradictions in terms that these are.

I have a slightly different read on musical trends as a reflection of politics over the last generation.  Big hair metal seems to have been like all other genres totally of the spirit of the 80s, a decade which oddly enough is only even remembered nowadays because of loony-liberal Family Guy.  I don’t take Alternative too seriously, particularly after watching the VH1 Classic Ages of Rock special which took such pains to portray it as having been much edgier than it really was – as many of its leading personalities were openly, it reflected trendy 90s libertarianism of style over substance.

I’ll never forget the epiphany represented when at my usual Wednesday night out a couple years back, I yelled at the cheerful folkie on stage asking for requests “play something corny from the 90s!”, with Green Day Time Of Your Life in the back of my mind.

Which brings us to the late 90s and all that truly wussy stuff George mentioned, when even the posture of libertarianism was gone and the stage was set for contemporary loony liberalism.  Also crucial to note is the incredible evolution of punk from its 80s hardcore excesses to the pathetic teenybopping left-anarchists of the last decade.  The unadulterated political absurdity reached by this set was well represented by Rage Against The Machine in its loyalty to the uber-Maoist sectarian Bob Avakian.

The Ron Paul campaign held out the distinct promise of alternative rockers and the alternative right together at last, and who knows what cultural terrain awaits any genuine right that emerges out of the smoldering remains of the current angry mob.   Ron Paul and Johnny Rotten may yet one day be as iconic an image as Nixon and Elvis.

No discussion of all this can be complete without mention of the odyssey of hip-hop, whose story arc has blatantly obvious political implications: what better metaphor could there be for how we got from Spike Lee’s black America to Barack Obama’s in less than a generation than, as just one example, Ice-T’s journey from I’m Your Pusher to Special Victims Unit, to say nothing of the truly Dickensian journey of Flavor Flav?

So in short, I think limiting the question to metal misses the forest for the trees.  Just to conclude with some food for thought, I think a much more interesting pop culture phenomenon has been the death of 60s nostalgia after it soared in the 90s – the recent hoopla for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock notwithstanding, though if anything it has only served to emphasize that Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield were the voice of a vastly different America than Tom Hayden or Mark Rudd.

I am a heavy metal fanatic. Well, I suppose I should say that I was a heavy metal fanatic when I could afford to be a fanatic about something other than library books. I recognize there is a rather stark contradiction between my conservative beliefs and demeanor, and my impulse to remove the sleeves from all my t-shirts, headbang to the point of whiplash, and air guitar until dawn. I can’t read Richard Weaver’s description of his era’s popular music (jazz was “a triumph of grotesque, even hysterical, emotion over propriety and reasonableness.”) without getting a little uncomfortable. If he hated jazz, I’d rather not hear his opinion of melodic death metal.

My CD collection required an update because long car rides require distorted guitars, and I was about to embark on an excellent road trip through Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. Before leaving, I decided it was time to buy some new music; my own collection has stagnated since I left the Beltway and began my penurious life as a PhD student. I was not particularly optimistic when I recently started looking for new bands, and assumed I would have to order off the internet anything worth buying. To my surprise, a substantial number of really good albums were released in the final years of the Bush administration and were available at Best Buy. This spurred an examination of my own collection, leading to an epiphany: during the last 30 years or so, the popularity of good, fun metal was associated with Republican electoral strength. Although I was pleased to finally have a good reason to support one of the major political parties, it saddens me to think that the apparently permanent Democratic majority will lead to the genre’s demise.

(A sidenote: were I writing this post about ten years ago, this is the paragraph where I would pretend I enjoyed Dark Funeral, or some other icon of extreme metal, in order to avoid being castigated on some metal forum for only liking wimpy, mainstream metal that in no way “hails.” Alas, I don’t really care for the stuff, and am no longer perturbed by such criticisms. Perhaps this is a sign of nascent maturity on my part.)

Headbangers are notorious for creating “rules” for heavy metal. I have only two: heavy metal should be fun, and a self-indulgent guitar solo is always a good thing. During the 1980s, these rules followed religiously by popular metal acts. Then, as Reagan’s time in office came to an end, things began to go horribly wrong.

Grunge acts like Nirvana and Alice in Chains brought the demise of glam (hair)  metal. This was not necessarily a negative development, as hair metal had become utterly buffoonish by the end of the 1980s. Unfortunately, when hair metal fell victim to its own excesses, it was not immediately replaced by anything good. During the first years of the Clinton Administration, it appeared that most Americans were finished with heavy metal.

The metal that found a mainstream audience a few years later was unrecognizable from that which prevailed a decade earlier. “Nu Metal,” which was really just hip-hop and funk combined with electric guitars, can barely be described as metal at all. Heavy metal lyrics also took a strange turn. Whereas popular metal was previously about cheap beer, loose women, and unnecessary brawls, metal lyrics in the 1990s were dominated by very different themes: whining about high-school bullies and whining about strict parents.  See every Korn song ever written for examples. As far as I’m concerned, heavy metal was better off dead.

I see now that things largely turned around by the middle of the Bush years. Ozzfest 2001 (which I had to drive eight hours in my clunker in order to attend) represented Nu Metal’s high water mark, with rap-metal acts such as Slipknot, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and Crazy Town on the main stage. Almost immediately thereafter, Nu Metal began a welcome decline. By 2005, Ozzfest was headlined by Iron Maiden, which represented a triumphant return to roots.

My most recent investigation into the last several year’s popular metal revealed a tremendous amount of really good albums, mostly by European bands. Dragonforce, which is clearly influenced by popular 80s metal, is one of the most entertaining metal acts I’ve ever encountered and has enjoyed much-deserved commercial success in the United States. Epic power metal acts like Nightwish also found a large American audience. Bands like Sister Sin sound more like Motorhead than Papa Roach. Ronnie James Dio and Judas Priest (with Rob Halford back in the band) were again headlining major North American tours. I am less thrilled with most of the new American bands, but even popular American “metal-core” music is pretty good — though much of it sounds ripped off from what In Flames and other Swedish bands were writing fifteen years ago.

There has also been a decine in the puerile satanism that once dominated metal lyrics. I wish I could ascribe this to an increased reverence for Christianity. I think it more likely that anti-Christian themes have waned because Christianity itself has waned; the number of people who can plausibly claim that Christianity oppressed them is now so small that songs on that subject no longer have much of an audience. Lately, when good metal deals with religious themes at all, it is usually advancing some variety of chest-thumping paganism.

I don’t really have a good explanation for why America’s taste in metal seems to change along with the nation’s political trends. One possibility is due to the fact that both heavy metal and the Republican Party are primarily favored by white men (which is not to say that everyone who likes one will also like the other).  A Democrat in the White House suggests that the political and cultural power of white guys is on the decline, and the political tastes of American white guys may change accordingly. This results in either efforts to shed a little bit of their “whiteness” (hence the hip-hoppification of metal in the Clinton years), or outright despair (hence the glut of popular songs during that same period that can only be enjoyed by the type of people who cut themselves in the dark). If this is true, however, it seems similar trends should prevail in country music. This does not appear to be the case (though I admit to knowing hardly anything about country). Perhaps this is because country fans are more confident and comfortable in their own, um, skin.

Whether surges of Republican popularity are good for the nation I leave for another time. I am increasingly convinced, however, that Republican presidents are good for heavy metal. Since we probably won’t have another one of those for a good, long while, we are probably doomed to another long period of crappy metal dominating the ariwaves. This does not appear to have happened yet, but the fact that Limp Bizkit and Primer 55 appear poised to release new albums seems to confirm this intuition.

Had I recognized this trend a year ago, maybe I would have voted for McCain.

In American terms, I identify with those who were attracted by the economic populism (including the economic patriotism) and the foreign policy realism (including the economic patriotism) of Barack Obama while also upholding traditional marriage in California and Florida, non-discrimination against working class white men in Colorado, restrictions on gambling in Missouri and Ohio, and the values embodied by (though not restricted to) the black and Catholic churches from coast to coast. Economically populist, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists. Pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war.

I believe in the conservation or restoration of such good things as national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman), the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework, and respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilization to the point of natural death, all of which “free” market capitalism corrodes to naught, both directly and by driving despairing millions into the arms of equally corrosive Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism or Fascism.

Just as one cannot logically oppose the decadent social libertinism deriving from the 1960s without also opposing the decadent economic libertinism deriving from the 1980s (or vice versa), and just as one cannot logically oppose the European Union’s erosion of our self-government and culture without also opposing that by global capital and by American hegemony (or vice versa), so likewise one cannot logically oppose the unrestricted movement of people without also opposing that of goods, services and capital (or vice versa). I do oppose all these things, and questions most searchingly the received opinion of Left and Right alike where the 1980s, in particular, are concerned.

If, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, “there is no such thing as society”, then there can be no such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation; therefore, there must be such a thing as society. There cannot be a “free” market generally, but not in alcohol, gambling, drugs, prostitution or pornography; therefore, there must not be a “free” market generally. The case against organized labor and its proper political role (notably the affiliation of trade unions to one or more political parties, with all that that entails) is the case against the aristocratic social conscience and its proper political role (notably, at least in Britain, the hereditary peerage), and vice versa; both with organized labor and its proper political role, and with the aristocratic social conscience and its proper political role, Britain has been more blessed than any other country on earth.

A country’s sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity are all eroded at least as much by that country’s heavy reliance on imported goods, rather than on a domestic manufacturing base, as by any other factor. The same is true if a country is heavily dependent on imports in order to feed her people, instead of maintaining a thriving agricultural sector, itself characteristically a bastion of strong family ties, and therefore also of strong community spirit; and the same is true if much of a country’s agriculture, industry or commerce is owned or controlled by persons who are either not her citizens or not resident within her borders for tax purposes. My country’s sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity have been, and are still being, so eroded.

Liberty, equality and fraternity are inseparable from nationhood, family and property, since liberty (the freedom to be virtuous, and to do anything not specifically proscribed) is inseparable from equality (the means to liberty, and never to be confused with mechanical uniformity), thus from fraternity (the means to equality), thus from nationhood (a space in which to be unselfish), thus from family (the nation in miniature, where unselfishness is first learnt), and thus from property (each family’s safeguard both against over-mighty commercial interests and against an over-mighty State, and therefore requiring to be as widely diffused as possible), which is the guarantor of liberty as here defined.

Therefore, I fight for the universal and comprehensive Welfare State. I fight for the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment. I fight for fair taxation. I fight for full employment. I fight for the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. I fight for co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies, mutual building societies and similar bodies. And I fight for every household to enjoy a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

And I do so from firmly within the traditions of Old Labour monarchism, Old Labour constitutional caution, Old Labour and Old Liberal Euroscepticism, Old Labour and Old Liberal Unionism in relation to Great Britain, Old Labour Unionism in relation to Northern Ireland (including the present importance of the British State in protecting the Catholic interest there both against any Orange State at home and against the subscription to the “two nations” theory on the part of the Dublin Establishment), Radical and Old Labour ruralism, Old Labour defence of the grammar schools, Old Labour moral and social conservatism, Old Labour economic patriotism, Old Labour foreign policy realism, identification with opposition both to Stalinism and to apartheid, and identification with the better strands of Toryism.

We need to get as many of our people as possible elected to Parliament, almost certainly as Independents, next year. Dissent from up to four of the twelve points in the last paragraph could be tolerated, provided that there was full subscription to the paragraph before that. After all, we want and need to be a broadly based movement, in order to coalesce into a new party once in Parliament, just as the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party (one parent of the Liberal Democrats), the Labour Party and, albeit at a very accelerated pace, the SDP (the Liberal Democrats’ other parent) all emerged.

And, if I may say so, you need to get elected to Congress as many as possible of those who were attracted by the economic populism (including the economic patriotism) and the foreign policy realism (including the economic patriotism) of Barack Obama while also upholding traditional marriage, non-discrimination against working class white men, restrictions on gambling, and the values embodied by (though not restricted to) the black and Catholic churches from coast to coast. Economically populist, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists. Pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war. Be they Republicans, Democrats or Independents.

A very bad decision.

The appeal should never have been withdrawn. But it was. (For that matter, he should have been tried by a jury. But he wasn’t.)  So he is legally guilty of 270 murders. People have died in prison, including of horrible conditions, while legally guilty of an awful lot less than that. The Scottish Justice Secretary has now called significantly into question the integrity and reliability of the Scottish justice system. That hardly seems like anything that a Scottish Nationalist should wish to do. It is certainly not anything that a citizen of the United Kingdom, within the fundamental documents of which Scots Law is specifically protected, should wish to do.

Kenny McAskill, and with him necessarily his boss Alex Salmond, has gone feral, doing something like this merely because he can. Downing Street’s view on this matter of the utmost international sensitivity was made perfectly apparent when several of the Prime Minister’s closest American allies signed that letter. That view has been wholly disregarded. Merely because it can be.

Well, two can play that game. There are legion ways in which Whitehall and Westminster, never mind elements broadly classifiable under the Departments of State most directly concerned with this matter, can tread on Holyrood’s toes, if they are so minded. Which, as of this afternoon, they most definitely will be.

Who are these “angry white men”? Are they the same “angry white men” who, on the day that they elected both President Obama and a Democratic Congress, made it clear that, in Florida and California, they wanted back the country where marriage only ever meant one man and one woman? That, in Colorado, they wanted back the country that did not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men? And that, in Missouri and Ohio, they wanted to preserve the country where gambling was not deregulated?

The name of that country is America. She long led the world in protecting high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs both against exportation to un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops, and against the importation of those sweatshops themselves. She could until recently say that she led the world in that she “did not seek for monsters to destroy”.

For she is the country of big municipal government. Of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific. Of very high levels of co-operative membership. Of housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes. Of small farmers who own their own land. And of the pioneering of Keynesianism in practice. Universal public healthcare provision is not only a natural extension of this, but has long been the vital missing link in it.

The Republican Party once called for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War, an outcome which would have precluded both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Republicans’ rural and Western half supported the New Deal while standing foursquare with the rest of their party in opposing needless foreign entanglements, insisting instead that America should only go to war if attacked (as eventually happened) or under clear and present threat of being attacked.

Eisenhower ended the Korean War, was even-handed in his approach to Israel and the Palestinians, and denounced the military-industrial complex. Congressional Republicans passed Civil Rights in the face of Dixiecrat resistance. Nixon ended the Vietnam War as Obama will end the Iraq War, and began détente with China as Obama is beginning détente with Iran (and beyond). Even Reagan initiated nuclear arms reduction, the only conservative thing that he ever did.

And Republicans opposed Clinton’s unpatriotic job-exportation, unpatriotic sweatshop-importation, and unpatriotic global trigger-happiness, all continued and expanded by the unpatriotic Bush Administration. Between eighty and one hundred per cent of Congressional Republicans would have voted against any Democratic proposal to invade Iraq.

The battle over healthcare can make the Democratic Party leaner and fitter, defined unambiguously by economic populism and thus by that populism’s underlying conservative principles. Once more the party of the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortion, passed by a Democratic Congress, signed into law by Carter, and still in force. What have the Republicans ever done like that? Where, today, is their Pregnant Women Support Act, endorsed by Obama at Notre Dame? The Democratic Party could be strictly the party that people were in because they supported things like universal healthcare, for the born and the preborn alike. Very “angry white men”.

In that vein, we seem to be seeing the beginnings of Jim Webb’s 2016 Presidential campaign. Reagan’s old Navy Secretary became a Democratic opponent of the Iraq War. His election in the purplest of Southern border states clinched the Senate for the party of his birth. There may emerge a candidate who is all three of a better economic populist, a better moral and social conservative, and at least as good a foreign policy realist. But until such time as that candidate emerges, Webb is the “angry white man” to watch.

Just saw it on the AP.  When I was a lad with center-left leanings first becoming interested in politics, Novak stood out as the person to learn and appreciate honest conservatism from in the era of Crossfire, and always in refreshing contrast to his dreary hack of a fellow conservative on Capital Gang, Kate O’Beirne.

The man had his shortcomings – I will still never understand how someone who claimed to have their political awakening after reading Whitaker Chambers could end his life as a patsy for the Alger Hiss of our generation, Scooter Libby.  But it was nice to see Novak a couple years ago being interviewed about his memoirs and having confirmed that he was really just a journalist with opinions and that he rued the way television had made him appear as much more of a partisan than he really was.

So thanks, Bob, for playing such a crucial role in exposing me to a world beyond cookie-cutter politics.

The forthcoming issue of Commentary is being headilned by Peter Wehner and Michael Gerson plotting “the path to Republican revival”.  While we should expect nothing else from these two veterans of and apologists for the Bush White House, it is nevertheless stunning to see the degree to which they will not retreat one inch from the dogmas of “compassionate conservatism”.

After an unoriginal summary of the state of American Politics in the summer of 2009, any illusions that the authors are interested in a genuine Republican comeback by exploiting Obama’s weaknesses on health care and related issues is put in hand with this thesis statement:

Any serious attempt to revivify the GOP might begin with a full-throated stand for a strong national defense.

It gets worse:

Obama’s effective freeze of defense spending over the next five years is inconsistent with American global commitments. Republicans would be astute to offer as an alternative an increase in defense spending in the range of 4 percent real growth per year, including support for an ambitious missile-defense program to counter the rising ballistic threats from North Korea and Iran.

To say nothing of this overly optimistic assessment:

In response, some Republicans have been tempted to promote their own brand of retreat from global engagement out of the belief that, the cause of democratic internationalism having been severely damaged by the war in Iraq, the GOP should seize the mantle of foreign policy “realism.”

As if this weren’t enough exposure for the neocons’ delusions about the present appetite of the American people for new foreign wars, the author of Bush’s promise to end tyranny in our world insists on once again breaking out into The Internationale:

A moral component to our foreign policy is, moreover, part of the American DNA. It would have been impossible to maintain the seemingly endless exertions of the Cold War without the American people’s instinctual concern for those held captive and their no less instinctual abhorrence of oppression.  Since the midpoint of the last century, this has been the GOP’s watchword. Among younger Americans focused on global issues like genocide, poverty, women’s rights, religious liberty, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, it can resonate loudly.

Lest we suspect that this manifesto of the Neoconservative Refoundation Party is limited to reaffirming the global democratic revolution, think again.  With no less delusion Wehner and Gerson insist that No Child Left Behind was a smashing success and that we must therefore charge full speed ahead in crushing the teachers unions, and most incredulously of all that the GOP can yet win over Hispanic and other immigrant voters by continuing the economic and social policies that created the exurban McMansion country now decaying into a hispanic slum.  Indeed, the new 8-mile could hardly be a more perfect metaphor for the failure of George W. Bush’s America.

Alas, in all aspects of both foreign and domestic policy, the court intellectuals of that America have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.