Liberals Are Done Debating

This week, for example, while thinking about the pope's take on global warming, I tweeted out this comment: "Celebrate climate change, an externality of the greatest poverty destroying program in the history of mankind." There is plenty to disagree with in my observation, I admit. Although I believe what I wrote to be true, I sent it out partly to elicit exactly the sort of reaction my tweet got -- with one person calling me a psychopath (a Slate writer, not some anonymous critic) and another calling me sociopathic, among other things. I don't mind the insults (perversely, in fact, I sort of enjoy them), but I do mind that the debate is over.

Conservatives may be ethically compromised, uninformed or -- if liberals are in a generous mood -- mentally unstable, but they can't be for real. At least, that's the sense I increasingly get from the left these days. Blame it on social media.

When a group confuses its politics with moral doctrine, it may have trouble comprehending how a decent human could disagree with its positions. This is probably why people confuse lecturing with debating and why so many liberals can bore into the deepest nooks of my soul to ferret out all those motivations but can't waste any time arguing about the issue itself.

Are you also corrupt? Probably. Bought off by big oil, big food or big something or other? Washington is teeming with Manchurian candidates, because no one could possibly be this malicious on his own. Why should liberals debate a point when they can debate your imaginary sugar daddy? Why else would conservatives "hate workers"? Why would they "bet against America"? Why do they want to destroy democracy? Why would conservatives vote against their own interests? Someone pays them to lie.

Or maybe you favor inequality, injustice, rape culture and poverty because privilege clouds your sense of decency. If you were born wealthy (anything over 130 percent of the poverty level or so), how can anyone expect you to have empathy for the destitute? You certainly don't possess the life experience or skin color to challenge leftist economic doctrine. For inexplicable reasons -- that can't possibly have anything to do with a genuine belief in supply-side economics, a belief in property rights or an aversion to punishing success -- tens of millions of you spend your political lives protecting the interests of billionaires for no other reason than that you hate the poor.

You hate a lot of things, don't you? Like half the country, you're furtively racist and irrationally misogynistic. The American idea is erected on a foundation of intolerance, according to one of the most celebrated thinkers on the left. You hate black people, sure, but also brown people. So this bloodlust manifests when you oppose the president on foreign policy, for instance. (Then again, maybe it's the Israel lobby paying you off.) You're not anti-Iran deal; you're pro-war. Just as you're not pro-Second Amendment; you're pro-mass shootings. You're not concerned about terrorism or (genuine) illiberalism; you're a bigot. You're not pro-school choice; you're anti-children. You're not pro-traditional marriage; you're anti-dignity. You're not pro-entitlement reform; you're anti-retirement.

You're not in favor of a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to climate change policy; you're anti-science. Skeptic. Denier. Psychopath. Why do you hate Earth?

Don't like big government? You're a nihilist. Forget what your policy does; watch your tone. Transphobic. Homophobic. Eleutherophobic. Sure, you may claim that you want to save unborn girls from the scalpels of Planned Parenthood, but your real goal is to control women. Even if you're Carly Fiorina.

Or maybe you can't see things clearly because you're hooked to the most addictive opiate imaginable, religion -- which, let's face it, you probably don't properly understand or adhere to correctly. Here, let them tell you what Jesus would do. Are you part of some regressive denomination that follows doctrine and hasn't been poll testing on the left, that isn't always pleasing to millennials' ears, that hasn't evolved properly or that still clings to "religious freedom"? You're a modern-day Orval Eugene Faubus, probably. We can sue you into compliance or mock you into the 21st century, because clearly you're too selfish to be part of our future.

What conservatives (and some libertarians) possess are not arguments but corrupt and nefarious ambitions. Defend yourself. What you can't possibly have are legitimate differences of opinion.

Lentulus, Lentulus ...

The bicoastal distribution of liberalism is a result of Yankee migration out West, starting with Oregon and the Old Northwest, and the only partial acculturation of the Atlantic Slope "deferential society" (as historian T.R. Fehrenbach calls it, I haven't seen the phrase elsewhere but it works) to Middle American values. Others are simply still half-European and never really got off the boat, but were intercepted on the wharf by ward heelers who took charge of them.

My idea of a new Constitution, same as the old one, but with New England and downstate New York disinvited, would give us the political heft to invite the rest of the "New America" to emigrate to Uruguay or Paraguay, where the Gay Left is going to create a fabulous new society and show us all how it's done (instead of leeching off us and stealing people's kids).

"Deferential society"? Read your book again. What part of America was more deferential than the Tidewater and the Lowland South? Old Virginia? Charleston? New Englanders had a reputation for being unruly disturbers of the peace -- Roundhead regicides in the 17th century, Sons of Liberty and Minutemen in the 18th, Abolitionists and Transcendentalists in the 19th. At least that's what Southern militants said about New England before and after the Civil War.

Of course there were long periods when New England was one of the more conservative parts of the country (say from the 1880s to the 1950s). This indicates that it's not so easy to make generalizations about the political culture of different regions. Connecticut and Alabama or Vermont and Mississippi are almost always going to be on opposite sides of political fights at any given time, but the positions taken may differ widely from era to era.

Of course, Portland OR has more in common with Portland ME than with a lot of other places in between. But the main factor is (as you suggest) that cities tend to vote Democrat and rural areas vote Republican. States dominated by cities and urban ways vote Democrat. Southern cities tend to vote Democrat. Atlanta and Jackson MS, say, weren't that far behind Northern cities in their vote for Obama. But there are more rural voters in Southern states. I know that it's more complicated than that, but heavy urban support for Democrats puts a monkey wrench in your plan.

"Middle America"? Does that include regions settled by Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Czechs? You might be surprised at how "half-European" by your standards some of them may be. Certainly, you'd be surprised at how little enthusiasm many of them would have for your plan. If the country splits up, it splits up in a big way. Ohio and South Carolina, Idaho and Arkansas, or Iowa and Alabama may realize that they don't have that much in common and don't want to subject themselves to some government over on the other side of the continent.

The thing about "Middle America" or the "Silent Majority" is that it's people coming together against something. Take away that something and people on different sides of the country may find that they don't have that much in common. It's also people coming together for something, but if the country's being torn apart we might see just how weak that "something" binding different states to the union has become. None of the pieces would be able to play the kind of role the US does in the world today. On balance, that would probably be a bad thing.

"Deferential society"? Read your book again.

Read my post again: I referred to the Atlantic Slope (East Coast), not New England only. European habits lingered longer all up and down the seaboard, even moreso among the jampacked cities full of immigrants.

I lost my earlier reply to you, but in it I did note that German immigrants, with their tradition of authoritarianism (which made Union men of them reflexively, when the Civil War began: government is God, all praise the government), did not settle in areas haunted by Jacksonians, but instead clustered with their own in northern Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. Those who went to Texas found out the hard way what public expressions of support for Unionism could get you there.

Of course there were long periods when New England was one of the more conservative parts of the country (say from the 1880s to the 1950s).

Of course they were "conservative" then: They'd won the Civil War (the gomers out West had no idea they'd lost, just like the South, except when they tried to transship their crops to market on Yankee-owned railroads), they were wallowing in the spoils of a continent, and they always had the Southern rednecks to eat .... and spit on. Life was good. Of course they were "conservative" -- they had it all, which was all the sweeter because those crackers down South had damn-all and were poorer than dirt. Yes, life was sweet.

No, attitudes and values migrated west with the people who left the Eastern source-areas, an idea shown to be obvious by Kevin Phillips, who compiled a series of maps by issues and showed this phenomenon in color, in the process attracting the attention of Richard Nixon, who 15 years later gave Phillips a post in his first administration. Yes, there is an urban/rural component in many issues and value sets (the Communist Party and its NEA subsidiary have never taken much interest in organizing the rural demes), but the starting point is always the values imported by immigrants from the East.

If the country splits up, it splits up in a big way.

If it does, whose fault will that be but the 'Rats', with their constant subornation of the 47%? Certainly not the fault of conservatives. But if you think the country would blow apart if confronted by a constitutional convention, then you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I happen not to share it, but to think instead that most everyone in America not attending UC Berkeley knows who the troublemakers have been.

The 48ers? They were opposed to the German "tradition of authoritarianism." That's one big reason why most of them they were opposed to slavery. Of course many Germans came here for economic reasons. But my point was that those attitudes that you attacked as Catholic or big city -- not statism, but a village or communitarian view of the world -- were shared by many Protestants and rural Americans.

Those who went to Texas found out the hard way what public expressions of support for Unionism could get you there.

And you celebrate that? Even the acts of what we'd now have to call terrorism?

Of course they were "conservative" then: They'd won the Civil War (the gomers out West had no idea they'd lost, just like the South, except when they tried to transship their crops to market on Yankee-owned railroads), they were wallowing in the spoils of a continent, and they always had the Southern rednecks to eat .... and spit on. Life was good. Of course they were "conservative" -- they had it all, which was all the sweeter because those crackers down South had damn-all and were poorer than dirt. Yes, life was sweet.

Always with the emotionalism. I'm pretty sure that New England factory or farm hands (or even bankers and professors) didn't spend much time eating or spitting on poor Southerners. It wasn't like they had the Internet and all the leisure to malign people.

"Having it all" in 1880 or 1890 or 1910 mean having not much by today's standards. Life in turn of the last century New England could be pretty tough (read Robert Frost or Ethan Frome). Even back in those days, there was talk about the grimness of New England farm and factory life.

I suppose that every group that isn't conservative can be said to be better off than some other group by somebody who wants to undermine their thinking. Somebody could do that to you too, and maybe point out that Texas or the South today isn't what it was a century ago, and that all your victim talk really doesn't reflect how things are now.

No, attitudes and values migrated west with the people who left the Eastern source-areas ...

That's true of Oregon, but not so true of Washington State. Not really so true of California, either. Sure, New Englanders went to Oregon, but coastal dwellers generally have a different take on things than inlanders. You can see that in the way that Los Angeles, settled by Midwesterners and Southerners, has become more like San Francisco (settled from Europe and the Northeast) in its political attitudes. Even without being on the ocean, a major city like Atlanta comes to harbor very different points of view from the outlying countryside.

But if you think the country would blow apart if confronted by a constitutional convention, then you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I happen not to share it ...

"Middle America or the "Silent Majority" was the product of years of shared experience, struggle even -- the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War. Most of us now don't have common public experiences like that to tie us together. So if the country splits up it will be messy and complicated. That kind of massive FU that you direct against some parts of the country is a reflection of disaffection or alienation that won't be easy to contain. Don't be surprised if even people you might take for allies turn it back on you.

The 48ers? They were opposed to the German "tradition of authoritarianism." That's one big reason why most of them they were opposed to slavery.

They were socialists opposed to non-socialism. Plunk them down in the "Workers' Paradise" of 1950's East Germany, and every damned one of them would have joined the Stasi or the Vopos.

A lot of people "opposed to slavery" didn't share fundamentals with the Beechers; they were Free Soilers instead who didn't want to see black bond labor west of the Mississippi. They were not pro-emancipation; they were anti-competition. They knew industrial agriculture was a threat to their livelihoods. That's why they opposed the expansion of slavery, and Lincoln knew the difference, too, which was why he trod the line he set out for himself and the Republican Party ..... at least until he was satisfied that he had achieved something like Total Power over the federal government.

I'm pretty sure that New England factory or farm hands (or even bankers and professors) didn't spend much time eating or spitting on poor Southerners. It wasn't like they had the Internet and all the leisure to malign people. Take your shot and raise you two: No, I am not talking about immigrant Poles stoking blast furnaces or mill girls getting porked by their supervisors, which was one of the charming features of the Millocracy prewar that so set them apart from the planters they accused of miscegenation with the help.

I'm talking about the people who benefited, by design and conspiracy, from the destruction of the Southern agricultural aristocracy, the Southern yeomen who mostly didn't own slaves and whose stake in their own freedom was nevertheless just as palpable as Jeff Davis's. I'm talking about Muffy and Buffy and Skip and Chip and all the other legacy snots who've directed America like a toy train set since 1860 while sneering at anyone who didn't own a Yale sweater: I'm talking about the deciders, and you know it.

Republic, my ass.

Even without being on the ocean, a major city like Atlanta comes to harbor very different points of view from the outlying countryside.

Having lived there and visted often, and having often abused my eyeballs with the vitriol of the Urinal-Constipation's editorial page, I can tell you what drove Atlanta's liberalism: lingering planter liberalism in Buckhead (social competition with the yeomanry) combined with relentless immigration from Yankeeland courtesy of major Atlanta employers (looking for "the better sort of people" no doubt: credentialism as a social divider and lever for increasing social distance from the yeoman scum).

There is also substantial black immigration into south Atlanta, to which I should add the constant gamesmanship of Republican "Gang of Eight" types who constantly prate about crossing the aisle to "get things done" (with a tax break included) and like to vote with the 'Rats on social issues because it makes them feel better, i.e. increases their social distance from the scum out in Douglas County.

Middle America or the "Silent Majority" was the product of years of shared experience, struggle even -- the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War. Most of us now don't have common public experiences like that to tie us together. So if the country splits up it will be messy and complicated.

That's an interesting idea, but it describes the defunct consensus of World War II, which has long since gone away. Liberals repine for the Good War, because they and theirs led it, with the imago of FDR at the head of our column. (Every time I see and hear Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Camelot plagiarist, on TV, I have to tune away: I can't stand her constant whining about FDR and JFK.)

But if you are looking for whatever created the current "Red/blue" split, Communists versus Americans, it is the propaganda campaigning of General Agayants and other disinformation specialists against America and the American ideal that has fed specific anti-American alliances between Communist governments and NGO's and American Leftist NGO's like the SDS, which according to Irving Howe was totally taken over by orthodox Marxist-Leninists [key perp: Bernardine Dohrn] because it refused to expel known Maoists and Communists, and the Weather Underground, which was the wreckage of the SDS-Revolutionary Youth League (led by Dohrn) after the SDS-RYL faction split from the senior SDS leadership in 1969 [we're talking about Left NGO's with the life cycle of a gnat, so "older" is only relative]:

"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020261/posts"

(See also Wiki under "SDS", somewhat scrubbed history there.)

The link shows the connection between Hanoi and the U.S. antiwar movement in the 60's. There are doubtless others, such as the notorious involvement of North Korean trainers with antigovernment Mexican Leftists in the late 60's that led to significant battles with government troops.

The poisoning of American public opinion by Left-aligned mediabots and institutions of the Left in opinion, leadership, and academe has produced the division you write of, and we are the remnant of genuinely American opinion, not transplanted Left opinion, 100% of which has come from eastern and central European totalitarian movements.

One last lingering point (and puzzlement):

Of course many Germans came here for economic reasons. But my point was that those attitudes that you attacked as Catholic or big city -- not statism, but a village or communitarian view of the world -- were shared by many Protestants and rural Americans.

I don't believe I mentioned Catholicism at all.

Communitarian thinking isn't Catholic thinking, which emphasizes the Mystical Body of Christ (Corpus Christi), which is the ecclesia militans here on earth, condemned by Adam's sin to struggle with the wiles of the Antagonist.

Catholic thinking has always been dominated by the image of this Body, with Christ at its head with the pope, the Church and kings below that, and everybody else below the nobility and clergy. I'd just point out that there's no room in that vision for "world village" or communitarian thinking. Everyone is challenged to be engaged fulltime with struggles against sin, the Devil, and his own corrupt inner nature.

Lentulus, Lentulus,

You just keep spinning out these nutty digressions. Refuting them only encourages you. But here goes.

They were socialists opposed to non-socialism. Plunk them down in the "Workers' Paradise" of 1950's East Germany, and every damned one of them would have joined the Stasi or the Vopos.

First of all, not all the 48ers were socialists. Secondly, most of the socialists in Germany (Social Democrats) in the 1950s opposed Communism and the GDR. Third, taking somebody from one era and popping them in another century when they weren't alive and asking what they would think or do is nonsensical. A person, say, from the 19th century with 19th century ideas confronted with 20th century realities would take some time to figure out just what was going on. So are you talking about some naive person who has done no thinking at all about new circumstances or somebody who's painfully thought things through and come to some knowledge about the new age? Either way, what you're talking about can't be proved one way or the other because the experiment can't be performed. It's sort of like saying that if you lived in 1860 you would have supported slavery -- so I guess it's okay to say that now.

But finally, I was originally talking about today's Midwestern farmers, shopkeepers, and working people of German or Scandinavian ancestry, who certainly aren't socialists or liberals or intellectuals, but who don't think as you do and don't share your affection for the old South. That you insult them and have to go back half a century or a century and a half for your attack suggests that maybe you aren't their best friend or their natural ally, which was the point I was trying to make.

No, I am not talking about immigrant Poles stoking blast furnaces or mill girls getting porked by their supervisors, which was one of the charming features of the Millocracy prewar that so set them apart from the planters they accused of miscegenation with the help.

Such "porking" (do we really have to use that word?) happened. But it was more likely to happen with household servants and their masters, and more likely to occur in conditions of slavery than in free labor situations. So back in your court (though you're the one who brought it up).

What I was getting at, though, is that not everybody in New England was a Cabot or a Lowell, just as not everybody in the South was a Randolph or a Pinckney. But somehow the Yankees are always "Muffy and Buffy and Skip and Chip and all the other legacy snots who've directed America like a toy train set since 1860 while sneering at anyone who didn't own a Yale sweater," as you put it, and the Southerners are always the put-upon working guys.

But those Cabots and Lowells weren't a large part even of the native born population. Ask the old Yankees in the Berkshires or on the Maine Coast who staffed (along with Irish and other immigrants) the mansions of the New York millionaires. It wasn't their palaces they were cleaning.

Part of the poverty of the South after the Civil War had to do with losing the war. Part of it had to do with the slump in agricultural prices, something which affected farmers in other parts of the country as well (including the West and the rural Northeast).

Those were hard times for a lot of people. Putting so much reliance on cotton, though, was a lousy move. Even without the war and even without increases in domestic production those prices were going to fall when Africa, India, Latin America and other parts of the world enter production in a big way.

But I don't know about clinging to grievances from a century ago. Being perpetually angry about things that happened before you were born (and being so one-sided about everything that happened) may stoke your self-righteousness, but it may not be the best way to make friends or win allies.

It's sort of like saying that if you lived in 1860 you would have supported slavery -- so I guess it's okay to say that now.

Way to stand your own proposition on its head, x. You've buried your own value judgment in your postulated modern condemnation of slavery out-of-hand, and demanded that the 19th-century slaveholder concur. Nice sleight of hand.

No, I said that the Germans (on scholarly authority) supported Lincoln and the Union cause reflexively because of their traditional inurement to the claims of authoritarianism. The Leviathan is good, all praise the Leviathan: Bow down, bow down, bow ye all down before the Light of the World! </Off Ivanhoe>

The authoritarian susceptibility of German immigrants in the 19 century lingers, and is detectable in Democrat politics today, in e.g. "the Portland Project" in which the local and state PTB have begun to turn an American city into their beau ideal of the Paris Commune made good. The original failed; but they will succeed, this time.

It is not a great stretch to transport 48'ers to the halcyon hammer-and-sickle People's Republic they once aspired to, which was established in their land by authentic, direct-line-of-descent German Communists, who as young men will have cut their teeth on imperial bones with the Spartakists and Rosa Luxemburg.

From the 48ers to the Commune to the Spartakists to the GDR: Show me the break in the thread -- the rope -- that connects them. From Engels to Ulbricht, it's a continuous rope.

I hope that is compact enough for you.

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