Posted on 08/03/2004 12:09:31 PM PDT by dead
Opening Statement
Dear FRiends:
I once suffered two great frustrations in being a freelance political writer. First, the loneliness: you put an article out there, and you might as well have thrown it down a black hole for all the response you get. Second, the ghettoization: when you do get response, it would be from folks you agree with. Not fun for folks like me who reliish--no, crave and need--political argument.
Then came the Internet, the blogs--and: problem solved.
I have especially enjoyed having my articles in the Village Voice posted on Free Republic by "dead," and arguing about them here. The only frustration is that I never have enough time--and sometimes no time--to respond as the threads are going on. That is why I arranged for an entire afternoon--this afternoon--to argue on Free Republic. Check out my articles and have at me.
A little background: I am a proud leftist who specializes in writing about conservatives. I have always admired conservatives for their political idealism, acumen, stalwartness, and devotion. I have also admired some of their ideas--especially the commitment to distrusting grand social schemes, and the deep sense of the inherent flaws in human nature. (To my mind the best minds in the liberal tradition have encompassed these ideals, while still maintaining that robust social reform is still possible and desirable. My favorite example is the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the Serenity Prayer and a great liberal Democrat.)
Lately, however, I've become mad at the right, and have written about it with an anger not been present in my previous writings. It began with the ascension of George Bush, when I detected many conservatives beginning to care more about power than principles. The right began to seem less interesting to me--more whiny, more shallow--and, what's more, in what I saw as an uncritical devotion to President Bush, often in retreat from its best insights about human nature.
I made my strongest such claim in a Village Voice article two weeks ago in which I, after much thought, chose to say conservatism was "verging on becoming an un-American creed" for the widespread way conservatives are ignoring the lessons of James Madison's great insights in Federalist 51 that in America we are supposed to place our ultimate trust in laws, not men.
Finally, in what I see as the errors of the Iraq campaign, I recognize the worst aspects of arrogant left-wing utopianism: the idea that you can remake a whole society and region through sheer force of will. I think Iraq is a tragic disaster (though for the time being the country is probably better off than it was when Saddam was around--but only, I fear, for the time being).
I am also, by the way, a pretty strong critic of my own side, as can be seen in my latest Village Voice piece.
So: I'm yours for the day--until 7:10 pm CST, when I'm off to compete in my weekly trivia contest at the University of Chicago Pub. Until then: Are you ready to rumble?
Respectfully,
Rick Perlstein
"...It began with the ascension of George Bush, when I detected many conservatives beginning to care more about power than principles...
Rick, could you provide some rationale regarding your linking Pres. Bush with conservatives caring more about power than principles?
I don't see the connection. As a matter of fact, I think it is illogical. I don't remember any President that I agreed with on all of the issues. Based on a sampling of your writing, you dissented from Pres. Clinton more than one time - yet he garnered great support from Democrats.
Clinton eventually supported welfare reform, military action against Iraq and terrorists, and even found a few spending cuts, although the bulk were found with the GOP Congress. So, does this mean that Democrats care more about power than principle?
Please explain, and a follow up please.
Me too. Granted, he is getting a lot thrown at him at once, but there are very few responses, and most of them are links to old articles.
Rick Perlstein is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
Perhaps it's not YOU, Rick Perlstein, the poster holds responsible...but the people and the party you defend?
I say answer the question. That's my vote.
(A reasonably intelligent and well-meaning liberal called in, and named six... but not a single one would have been different if John Edwards, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, or Al Sharpton were running. They were all desires for the overturn of Bush policies or past or future appointments, and not a single affirmation of a Senator Kerry stance... as if there are any)
Reminds me of a second good question: Given that he has only participated in 14 of 112 votes this year, has been widely quoted as saying "I was for it before I was against it", and since he tripped on his tongue and made a pro-Ohio State football remark in Michigan, what reasons would you offer to motivate non-aligned swing voters who know these things to go out and vote for John Kerry? (ie, can he be trusted to actually DO his job, make decisive moves, and not make a major on-the-spot gaffe in sensitive negotiations? "Cowboy" George Bush can be relied to step up and do the unpopular thing, even with France's approval, and the "moron's" gaffes are mostly cute new words like "misunderestimate.")
Shocking, positively shocking. ;-)
Why not? We do. I'm personally responsible for the cruel rape of Lucrecia.
Crystal ball? Time travel?
Open your eyes, my good man (I assume you're male) and see what there is to be seen.
I'm not very familiar with your writing. Your description of the right's sudden shift to "whining and shallow" seems rather vague. Could you explain in exactly what way?
-----
Shallow: the rise of Ann Coulter. See my recent letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review about how no conservative who makes claims about liberals ever INTERVIEWS liberals, whereas liberals who write about conservatives (like me) try to give their writing depth by interviewing conservatives all the time.
My letter:
To the Editor:
In his review of Thomas Frank's ''What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America'' (June 13), Josh Chafetz partakes of a rhetorical maneuver fit only for blackguards and illiterates.
It goes like this:
Ann Coulter is a vitriolic right-wing pundit. (Examples of Coulter's notoriety are likely to pop to the forefront of the reader's mind: averring of Muslims, ''We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity''; fantasizing about the incineration of The New York Times Building; accusing those she disagrees with of treason.)
Tom Frank is a vitriolic left-wing pundit.
Q.E.D.: Tom Frank must be like Ann Coulter.
He isn't. Frank did something Coulter never, ever would do -- something no conservative ever does: patiently, respectfully, he sat down with people he disagreed with and listened to them. That he did not prefer what they had to say -- for reasons he illuminates with a sustained, subtle and learned argument, something Coulter has never managed to do -- is a writer's prerogative. It is not, however, a reviewer's prerogative to invent a case for guilt by association.
I suppose Tom Frank is vitriolic: ''bitter, scathing, caustic,'' reads my dictionary. But he is also a responsible intellectual, careful and thoughtful, and deeply humane. Nothing in his book is unsupported by evidence and logic, disagree with it though you may -- including those ''dry statistical studies'' for which Chafetz ''searches his book in vain.'' The book groans with them. Search not in vain, Mr. Chafetz: one of them, from the Center for Rural Affairs, is cited in the first paragraph.
---
As for whiny--well, I just interviewed a conservative leader in Portland who said that conservatives were "opressed" by gays. Maybe you agree, but he also said conservatives were "opressed" when liberals called them names. It is an interpretation that Thomas Jefferson, for one, would have disagreed with. When he entertained foreign visitors as president he would always pile high a stack of the most scabrous anti-Jefferson pamphlets and newspapers in the waiting room (back then his enemies called TJ the "Nigger President" and the "Atheist President") in order to demonstrate that in America, it was precisely //not// an insult to anyone's rights, even a president's, to call them names.
That's because there is very little difference between the paleocon right and the left. Both are isolationist, anti-Israel, and anti-semitic. That's how crazy the left is now. It's morphed into the loony ultra-right.
And they both have lots in common with the America-hating Islamofascists...
A sadist says "no" when he/she knows that it will bring "torture" to the masochist by denying him/her pain.
No vast right-wing conspiracy. Upgrades have gone on overnight for the past few nights and JohnRobinson warned us that he's tweaking the system today and our response times might be, in his words, abysmal.
This is perhaps the only thread Lazamataz hasn't posted on. Do you think he missed it?
For the same reason you hold individual conservatives responsible for dragging James Byrd to his death and Abu Ghraib prison.
The only difference between you and me is that I can unreservedly condemn the human debris and their beliefs who commited those acts and you still dig the murdering socialists who brought you Pol Pot and Waco....
Rick,
One thing I've always wondered about the American Left: how do you justify leftist ideology within the framework of the American Revolution? The way I see it, not only was this country founded by those with a deep, sincere distrust towards centralized power---so much so that "popery" was a very vivid fear for most---it was also founded by those who believed in the ascendancy of a strong, independent mercantile class, and a prosperity achievable by all through hard work, the freedom of upward mobility, and God's will (a.k.a. fate).
Do you think the political ideology of the American Left fits within the framework of the American Revolution? Or if it doesn't, do you think the ideology or spirit of the American Revolution is antiquated and no longer applicable to modern America, whether as part of its political institutions, or the very essence of Americanism?
My best to you, and bravo for having the courage to post here.
If you are here for the rare treat of a serious discussion between the two sides, then you shouldn't need to even ask. Don't bother with the doofuses, respond intelligently and affirmatively to the real questions, and be sincere. That alone would make this thread a keeper.
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