Since I make no bones about being a Liberal, it makes me laugh my lunch out of my mouth when I hear Right wingers of any description or nationality talk about how shrill, intolerant and downright uncivil Liberals are.
Watching the Republicans get ready to re-enact the Hindenburg landing, it is amusing enough to make a cat laugh that some of the most divisive, deranged figures of the Republican Right are already making noises about how intolerant of dissent Liberals are!!!
I guess I must have misunderstood when Ann Coulter claimed that all Liberals and Democrats were treasonous, when Bush creates imaginary straw men to knock them down in ever more desperate campaign speeches across the country, when someone who says something uncomplimentary to Darth Cheney at a public appearance is arrested by the Secret Service, when the Republicans got a CBS TV film on Reagan cancelled because it had a soupcon less fawning admiration and a dash too little of hero worshipping than they demanded! Silly me - Liberals are intolerant *and* stupid as well, I guess.
Or - hang on, having made a dog's breakfast of actually governing the US, now that any possible notion of the Republicans having any more integrity than junkie pimps hanging around outside an elementary school, the competence to run even a swimming school for ducks or even as much honesty as a hyena has well and truly been blown to bits, they're preparing the story for their tenure in opposition. 'Restoring civility' to American politics - when they get investigated, censured, impeached, barred from office and just plain imprisoned, the meme will be in place. It's not their fault - it's the Democrats' fault for lowering the standard of discourse in American politics.
We all know that left to themselves, George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Tom de Lay, Bill Frist and Antonin Scalia like nothing better than to kick back over a grapefruit juice, discuss Plato's Republic, have Don Rumsfeld hold a pop quiz on Thomas Paine and even throw in a little more Thomas More once in a while... Of course, it can get rough sometimes - I hear they once raised their voices to each other when discussing the Federalist Papers, but hey, that's quality discourse!
Not this - Jack Abramoff's going to jail for scamming Native American tribes, Duke Cunningham's going to jail for taking whopping bribes, Bob Ney's going to jail for taking bribes, David Safavian's going to jail for taking bribes, Mark Foley's resigned for grooming kids for sex, Dennis Hastert's hiding out because he was hiding Foley's shenanigans, Bill Frist is being investigated for insider trading, Jim Kolbe's being investigated for inappropriate contact with minors, Susan Ralston's resigned and being investigated for corruption, Scooter Libby's going to jail for leaking classified info to discredit administration critics, Darth Cheney's company has been proved to have ripped off American taxpayers for millions - but this all just goes to show much Liberals have dirtied American politics!
Here's an excellent piece that's required reading for anyone who ever fell for that line.
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I say old boy, are n't you over-egging the pudding a little?
Sure the Republicans have n't exactly covered themselves in glory, which is why they're probably going to lose the House (and they deserve to). But surely you can't seriously think the Democrats are any better and were n't guilty of similar abuses of power when they were in office?
I trust you were similarly apoplectic when Studds (D-MA) was getting jiggy with the pages, when Dan Rostenkowski (D-Il) encouraged less than entirely regular accounting practices, when Al "No-controlling-legal-authority" Gore collected money, illegally, from any Buddhist temple he could find.
If you were, I salute your righteous indignation (while worrying for your health -- your blood pressure must be phenomenally high). If you were n't, forgive me for thinking your outrage a little contrived.
As for your contention that the Republicans are shaping to blame the Democrats for the breakdown in civilty -- I just see no signs of it. Or, to be more accurate, I see no signs that its a recent phenomenon. Before you say "Gotcha!", I'd like to point out that the Democracts, too, continuously, and with undisguised relish, accuse Republicans of dirtying politics and of destroying civility. Its an integral part of American politics, and one of the grand traditions that enliven these biennal jousts
Juvenal,
First, thanks for your comments and for restoring hope that political debate and argument can be polite and not descend immediately into name-calling. I mean that quite sincerely.
Second, I agree with you that there is more than enough outrage for it to be spread all around. Let's also agree that my political views differ quite dramatically from yours - 'not that there's anything wrong with that'.
Having said which, I'm afraid I was even younger than Studds' targets when those incidents happened, so I can claim to have been completely ignorant at the time. Yes, it was reprehensible, but to see double standards in action, I'm afraid I'm going to raise the favorite bogey-man of the Right - Clinton had consenting sexual relations with another adult and pretty much got crucified by the Republicans and condemned by the Democrats. Yes, it was adultery, yes, it was in the Oval office, but it was between consenting adults.
He will rightly bear the shame of that for the rest of his life, but don't you find even a trace of hypocrisy in the Right's response to a Congressman quite obviously indulging in systematically 'grooming' underage kids, supposedly under his protection, for sex? So far it has included:
- We didn't know
- We did what we should have
- It's alcohol that did it
- It's the gay cabal in Congress that's done it
- Never mind Foley, what about the Democrats who knew it before we did?
- It's all George Soros' fault
And the winner of the booby prize: 'It's just some naughty texts'!
And yes, while no one can defend Rostenkowski, I'm afraid I have to laugh off your comparison of Al Gore's supposed fundraising with some of the incidents I've mentioned. His supposed crime was that he appeared at a Budhhist temple where fundraising was happening - he says he didn't know, you say he did. However it happened, does that compare either to the scale or the breadth of what Abramoff was doing? Or to the fact that De Lay and others went to the Mariana Islands, got wined and dined and praised 'capitalism' while women were basically serving as indentured labour for the sake of those 'Made in the USA' labels?
How is it that 'Conservatives' and 'Libertarians', who for decades have pummelled Liberals for 'moral relativism' now have the 'But look at these guys...' defence down pat these days? Where has that famed moral absolutism gone? Where are the objective standards by which Duke Cunningham should be judged? Since the 80s, we've heard how Liberals have caused moral degeneration in the fabric of society by endlessly finding excuses to forgive everything, but surprise, surprise, when a staggeringly large bunch of Republicans are caught with hands in the till or with their pants down, *then* how come there is absolutely no shortage of excuses to forgive these clowns with?
I'm sorry, but this Congress and this administration has finally exposed the hollowness of modern Conservatism's claim to see the world 'as it is' - their view of the world is only how it best benefits them and the devil take the rest.
Don't get me wrong, Cunningham, Foley, Abramoff are scum and should be held accountable for what they've done. I don't think you'll find many conservatives condoning their behaviour, or even raising the "but the other guys suck as well" point in defense of the atrocious behavior. Conservatives feel compelled to remind folks of the impressive catalogue of pederasty, financial impropriety, sexual harassment and other venality among politicians on the left because the left displays such shocked outrage each time news of Republican oompus-boompus leaks out. The left seems to think (or at least gives that impression with their responses to these scandals) that it has a lock on virtue, and that conservative public policies inevitably attract only the debased and the hypocritical, whereas liberal policies are espoused only by the virtuous. Politicians are politicians, whether they're on the left or the right -- you're going to find heros and scoundrels on both sides and in roughly equal numbers.
The Republican party has done (to my thinking) a better job of expelling its rotten apples. In recent years when individual Republicans have been exposed as being corrupt or venal the party has gone out of its way to expel the individual and to make it clear that they don't condone the behavior. The Democrats have often had an unfortunate tendency to close ranks and try to protect its wrong-doers. A couple of examples:
Trent Lott v. Chris Dodd -- they made roughly similar remarks in roughly similar settings (Lott at an event honouring Strom Thurmond, Dodd in one honouring Robert Byrd). The Republicans turfed Lott out of his leadership spot, whereas the Democrats went on the offensive claiming Dodd's remarks had been taken out of context.
Foley v. Studds -- Foley behaviour was truly outrageous. There is no evidence, though, that he had any physical contact with these pages. Studds slept the with pages. The Democratic party refused to expel Studds and he continued in office for years after that (with his seniority intact). The Republican party expelled Foley as soon as they knew about the IMs (as opposed the e-mails, which, though creepy, were not sexual).
Foley v. Clinton -- Foley has been roundly and soundly criticized by the social conservatives in the party. No ones made excuses for him (he's tried to make a few shabby excuses for himself). When the Clinton scandal broke, feminists, who for years had been telling us that there was no such thing as consensual sex where the woman worked for the man, all lined up to support Clinton's shocking behavior as "sex between consenting adults in private." A few even indicated that they'd have been proud to provide similar services to the President for his role in keeping abortion legal.
I'm sure you have plenty of examples that point in the other direction. I think they make my point -- the political parties are equally corrupt and venal, and often tend to betray their principles.
Its nice of you to thank me for my comments. I seem to remember you being less grateful back when we were trouncing Hastings regularly in Atmodya Bhavan ...
juvenal,
my friend, apologies for seeing this post much later, so I don't know if you'll ever see this comment, but I can't resist it.
Perhaps Libertarian means 'taking liberties with memory'? Because as I remember it, in our second year at that rather undistinguished institution, Hastings won the debating trophy, beating your asses in the final, after 7 years!
The look on that little crook Alney's face as he gave me the trophy - given of course the relations between us, which strangled at birth any chances of my making the Lucknow team - was priceless!!! Worth a spot in a MasterCard ad any day of the week!
Bloody hell! Before civility takes over completely and discourse becomes balding men talking about their shared youth, let me stir the pot a wee bit.
Juvenal: I think you do protest a little too little. The shocking scandals, the wide-eyed outrage might well be "one of the grand traditions that enliven these biennial jousts": "Panem et circenses", as you might have once said. But Foley, Abramoff and DeLay are not just rotten apples who seasonally get sifted out, nor is the deserved loss of Congress just a small blip in the fortunes of the GOP: they are symptomatic of the decline and fall of the modern American Conservative movement - we have more corrupt Congressmen today because we have much more government. The rainbow coalition of Conservatives, whom the GOP claims to represent have all come together under the rallying call of reduced government. And exactly how has government reduced in the last 6 years? Shrink the government till it sinks in a bathtub? Perish the thought! From the vantage point of an iceberg the government looks like the Titanic herself. From the dramatically increased government spending, to the Patriot Act to the war in Iraq the Federal goverment has become a Super Nanny state - "What big hands you have grandma", as we might now glumly echo Little Red Riding Hood. Iraq is biggest big government project I have seen in my life: the only surviving reason for the war is now the noble intention of bringing democracy to the Middle-East! This is positively Napoleonic in scope - I can see a liberal like Christopher Hitchens supporting it, (any man who objects to being called a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay by pointing out that that he was a Trotskyite and not a Trotskyist is a fucking irredeemable liberal for life), but why are reduced government modest little conservatives supporting this ? Burke is in heaven and all’s surely not right with the world.
The popular support for the GOP comes from people who wish the government to intervene - ban gay marriage, ban abortions - not from people who wish on principle that the government not interfere in their lives. The paradox of a Conservative government, which wishes to reduce government, but is elected by people who wish to have the government institute their moral vision as the law of the land, cannot be resolved. It has resulted in the party of Goldwater becoming the party of Karl Rove. Big Government has firmly come to stay - the crudely framed dichotomies of Pro-life/Pro-choice, Low Taxes/ High Taxes Gay Marriage/ Happy Marriage will form the choices between which an expansive government will lurch.
Which brings me to my point: When, what you are facing is complete reversal of the core Conservative principle of reduced government, how can you respond to charges of corruption against the GOP (even if these awful, gleeful Liberals are making it) by pointing out that the Democrats in their day were corrupt too? This wan attempt at scoring a few feeble gotchas might have worked in Atmodaya Bhavan - it might have caused a sagely nodding, but completely clueless Myers to stroke his dainty beard, but your chipper sang-froid in the face of the void is baffling. The Conservative movement rose, declined and has now fallen. The evidence you ask? From Nash, Kirk and Buckley to Savage, O'Reilly and Limbaugh ! Do I set the brow too low? What about Wills, Didion and Chambers ( mid 60's National Review ) to JLo, Jpod and Jonah ( mid 00's National Review ) ? In Lionel Trilling's now prophetic phrase, what passes for Conservative thought today are, "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas".
And finally, while you watched on TV the unseemly sight of a midnight session of Congress to save Terry Schiavo and might I add, immanentize the eschaton, did you not get this urge to stand athwart history yelling, screaming, hollering, cawing, sobbing, pleading "STOP"?
To deal with matters of great pith and moment first. The only reason Hastings won that debate was a fortuitous thunder clap, which allowed you to trot out a completely inane line (if memory serves me right "That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is nature") which had no relevance to the debate, but which impressed a few shallow and uninformed judges (Sinha in particular).
AntC, those parts of your comments that I understood (I've misplaced my dictionary) I heartily agree with. Conservatism has lost its way, and its precisely the growth of government that has generated all this corruption. Which is why I, for one, am giddy with delight at this electoral loss. Conservatives will have to re-discover their small government roots and learn how to govern without becoming creatures of government.
Juvenal: Is "Immanentize the eschaton" the phrase you refer to? (I've misplaced my dictionary etc)
I thought Young College Republicans went around with "Don't Immanentize the Eschaton" T-shirts to register their oppostion to the Welfare State....
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