Avant Le Déluge
Here to seize back the historical moment is Paul Mirengoff of Powerline.
The two faces of conservatism
December 18, 2008
Posted by Paul at 12:45 PMThe deck seems stacked against those of us who favor free markets.
It would seem so at this time, yes.
The free-market economy can…
No, because wait. Right here is the difference between the Powerline guys and people who aren’t made out of spite and Der, and who don’t have little cuckoo-bird figurines of Robert Taft popping out of their foreheads. When sane people witness the world financial system melting down, it gives them pause.
In Australia in the 1900s, some antipodean, arm-gartered Mirengoff was adjusting his green eyeshade and spitting on his hands and crafting editorial sentences like, “The deck seems stacked against those of us who favor the introduction of rabbits.” His oeuvre is as obscure to us today as Mirengoff’s will be to the marauders who ransack our houses in search of gasoline and antibiotics.
The free-market economy can produce astonishing growth for decades, with only brief, minor interruptions. But these minor interruptions can become the pretext for significant government intervention. And when a major crisis comes along, every 70 years or so, it becomes the basis for a massive increase in government entanglement in the economy.
You can probably see where he’s going with this.
It isn’t any worse than Jonah Goldberg’s Wednesday column (Shorter Jonah Goldberg: A crisis is no time to change course), and while we’re on the subject, I ought to confess that I’ve never agreed with the popular view that Jonah is the stupidest stupe in all of Stupidland, or even that he ranks particularly low among conservative writers. I’ve always, actually, thought that he was pretty clever in an underachieving, college-atavistic way, like the characterological ‘good arguer’ who would raise his hand a lot in class, but finesse his research papers and talk his way out of homework assignments. The fact that he ended up on CNN gassing off on foreign policy was, I always figured, an artifact of our modern intellectual culture in its preoccupation with credentials over qualifications and either of the two over expertise.
Conversely and on the other hand, I believe that the Powerline guys are genuinely stupid. Not ‘stupid’ in the simple way of a playground insult, but in the sense that they’re like a trio of cranky upper-middle-class saucer enthusiasts, intellectual cultists who never learn anything and who indeed keep repeating the same comical mistakes again and again — like Orwell’s ‘boot stamping on a human face, forever,’ except it’s a tasseled loafer on a flaming bag of dogshit.
Moreover, I’ve never been able, as others say they have, to distinguish among them in their stupidity beyond the fact that John Hinderaker has the fustiest style and is the most likely to say something interesting, e.g. a claim like “liberals have no sense of humor” just as the camera pans to reveal a rotting shark dangling above him, then a closeup of a fraying rope.
The free-market economy can produce astonishing growth for…
I still can’t remember from day to day whether Mirengoff is the one who looks like this guy, or whether he’s the one who looks like Newman from Seinfeld.
The free-
But in any case, the reason I’m mentioning Jonah and his latest column is that together with this thing of Mirengoff’s, you can really see the success of the slow, at first aspirational, ultimately decades-long and richly financed conservative project of piling up cooked information and slanted analyses, paper after column after article after study, until they almost literally have no historical or social referents that aren’t ideological.
Let’s back up and let Mirengoff explain our current situation:
The free-market economy can produce astonishing growth for decades, with only brief, minor interruptions. But these minor interruptions can become the pretext for significant government intervention. And when a major crisis comes along, every 70 years or so, it becomes the basis for a massive increase in government entanglement in the economy.
This phenomenon isn’t difficult to understand. In a democratic society, the temptation to limit the economic freedom of the well-to-do, and to expropriate their wealth, is great. The temptation is kept in check only because our economic system produces such positive outcomes. Any decline in the outcomes revives the temptation, and a precipitous decline causes it to mount stilts.
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something to say for more than half an hour. It’s not that there’s anything irregular about the scraps of received reasoning from which Mirengoff fashioned this catechism of wingnut socio-economics. It’s all venerable stuff, part Spencer, part Rand, part Hayek, Von Mises, and others, funneled through the American Legion,1 the John Birch Society, and other crackpot organizations, and laundered as policy during the Reagan years, becoming since then a sort of magical language of the right’s anti-reason intellectuals, public-disempowerment activists, and anti-government officials.
Notice, especially, how the free market exists always outside of history, as if it were something that wasn’t invented, but rather discovered. To this free market, major crises will ‘come along,’ uncaused by anyone or anything in particular.2 These are also entirely unpredictable, as we can see from the wingnut protestations up through most of 2008 — laughing protestations, arm-pumping, ha-ha–in-your-face protestations — that there was anything wrong with the robust, indeed booming Bush economy.
No, as Jonah was saying, during these crises, we must resist the temptation to conduct Frankensteinian experiments against nature, messing with success through devices such as government and taxation — devices that mankind was never intended to use except against poor and middle class people. Yes, absolutely.
But what stopped me cold there for awhile was that pace Mirengoff, “the temptation” during an economic crisis is not toward survival or security, not toward finding a means to end the crisis or ways to mitigate its harm, but toward a sort of secret-historical class warfare, a mob urge to grasp at the “economic freedom” of the wealthy. Startlingly but not inaptly, Mirengoff associates this urge with democracy.
With the jumble of ideological scholarship surrounding them, and with Jonah and hundreds of other such characters constantly advancing the conservative project, attempting to pin the label of ‘fascist’ on liberals and so forth, the basics of their faith are becoming evermore unclear to these people, as they were very much not unclear to many of their intellectual ancestors: that conservatism’s organizing principle, the pinion around which it revolves, is to advance the interests of established wealth; that its method is to indulge Americans’ baser impulses by providing a ceaseless parade of outrages and enemies, a gladiatorial cheering for military adventures, flattery for the ignorant, and certainty for the incurious; and that the sum total of conservatives’ wants and beliefs has historically, since ‘conservatism’ became a movement rather than a temperament, equated to a sort of small-‘f’ fascism, an American ‘free enterprise’ version of what Italy seemed to be in the 1920s, and Germany seemed even better to represent for a brief few years in the 1930s: a system in which the Federal government is represented by a strong and enabled military and a robust security sector, while business interests and individuals of success reigned, according to natural law, over the free market of civil life and culture. And that’s certainly a sentence right there, but as long as we’re looking back at the last Great Depression, let’s take it all the way to town.
But then while we weren’t looking came Mirengoff’s big insight, the ‘two faces’ of the title:
This dynamic helps us understand the two faces of conservatism: optimistic and pessimistic. The Reagan-style optimist fixates on the capacity of our free-market system to produce wonderful outcomes. The pessimist fixates on the fact that, in our democracy, we may be only a few bad quarters away from socialism. The realistic conservative doesn’t fixate on either reality but always keeps both in mind.
One might imagine that the catastrophic failure of the free-market system would deemphasize the “optimistic” style, seen chiefly when they’re trying to sell you some Trojan Horse like Social Security privatization, privatization of the public schools, the privatizing of public utilities, a Bush/Cheney administration, or the deregulation of some predatory industry or another. Yes indeed, catastrophe encourages another face of the right wing. But where Mirengoff sees two faces, our reckoning begins with three.
1 Cf.
2 Except when they’re caused by government regulation, poor people, conspiracies of liberals, the Democratic Party, irresponsible liberals and their well-known mania for thoughtless free-market deregulation, or combinations thereof abetted by a conspiracy of the liberal media.
with Jonah and hundreds of other such characters constantly advancing the conservative project …
Here is the hope, Gavin M.
Jonah and his hundreds advance the conservative project the way shrub and Cheney advanced in Vietnam.
…check out the Canadian (Conservative (!)) government’s sudden (crisis-impelled) shift to embrace intervention/stimulus/entanglement to the tune of $30 billlion – yeah, yeah, small potatoes in the U.S. context) It remains to be seen whence this “investment in the future.” will be derived. The odds of the heavy duty beneficiaries (business/shareholders) bearing the load? – vanishingly small.
I’m going out right now to get a pair of stilts to mount.
Yeah, be ready for the “financial disaster socialism” approach. The seriously disturbed Mark Levin was quacking the same line on the AM yesterday.
Who/what is the actual individual, committee or clearing-house that thinks of or distributes this crap? One often hears the phrase “republican talking points,” which we understand are faxed or semaphored nation-wide on a daily basis to the radio foamers & typhoid typists, but can anyone advise me what the actual source of all this is? I. e., who’s paying for it?
Shorter Mirengoff:
The fact that rich people fuck over the working class and poor, especially during hard times, is no reason to abandon conservatism.
..the camera pans to reveal a rotting shark dangling above him, then a closeup of a fraying rope.
Don’t forget the bird.
“who’s paying for it?”
you are. it’s government propaganda.
The apparatus of pundits, think tanks, endowed chairs, and so forth actually costs literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The money is hard to account for because it’s privately raised and disbursed, with significant chunks coming directly from various Olin, Mellon-Scaife, etc. charitable foundations.
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something to say for more than half an hour.
congratulations. you made it through the entire post without doing so…
The Reagan-style optimist fixates on the capacity of our free-market system to produce wonderful outcomes. The pessimist fixates on the fact that, in our democracy, we may be only a few bad quarters away from socialism. The realistic conservative doesn’t fixate on either reality but always keeps both in mind…saying What’s in it for me?
My greatest wish is to see these guys file for unemployment and foodstamps.
And since their ideology venerates the free market and its most powerful beneficiaries above all else, a collapse of the system they worship is beyond their comprehension.
One thing that’s struck me about conservative pundits during the last couple months is their pathetic inability to grasp how dangerous the economic situation has become. To most of them, it’s just another opportunity to shift blame or grouse about big government. They come across as some of the least worried people in America right now, the least worried because they’re the most deluded.
To most of them, it’s just another opportunity to shift blame or grouse about big government,
or benefit from bailouts.
They tried to blame the world-wide economic crisis on the illegal Mexican working down the block with the leaf blower and the hundred thousand dollar mortgage that he never should have qualified for.
Enough of those Mexicans and the global economy crashes.
Except that argument was so ludicrous nobody would fall for it.
Then they trotted out the blame the unions tactic.
This one’s got legs, baby…
Malkin link doesn’t work. The link looks funny.
[fixing]
except it’s a tassel loafer on a flaming bag of dogshit.
I was going to have that printed on a t-shirt, but I already have all the t-shirts I need, so I have tattooed it across my forehead instead.
Yeah, be ready for the “financial disaster socialism” approach.
Apparently the nefarious Leftists are fond of using a sinister tactic known as the “shock doctrine” to advance their agenda. Whenever a crisis occurs, whatever it is, they will find some way of citing it as a reason for making their chosen economic reform. They have no shame.
Can one show me this period of tremendous growth under free markets? It seems we had a nasty cycle of booms and busts for the first 100+ years of this country. And then, after a particularly nasty bust in the early 20th century, we passed all these regulatory laws, added federal insurance to deposits. We also added a highly progressive income tax system (the rich got taxed at 90% at one point!), and a larger social security net.
The middle class expanded, real wages grew across all income levels, and the economy did pretty darn well without too many problems. The biggest coming from the exogenous OPEC induced oil crisis, but no real endogenous problems. Conservatives saw this as proof that things were ok and that things could be even better if we loosen the reigns and cut some corners. Slowly they deregulated markets or created new unregulated markets. Then, eventually, the system implodes once again, not unlike the first 100+ years of our history where such economic disasters happened fairly regularly. Many people rightly see that these acts of deregulation and policies of middle class erosion didn’t work out so well and suggest it may be best to return to the system that treated us pretty well for the better half of a century.
Others make up silly stories about bizarro worlds where the good times occurred during the periods of deregulation and all endogenous implosions of unregulated markets were not inevitable outcomes of unfettered capitalism but mysterious, unpredictable, and inexplicable acts of nature (except of course for when such implosions can be pinned on brown people).
Oh, did someone say, tasseled loafer?
One joker short of a stacked deck.
This is an amazing post. The “interrupting the analysand” tic is fantastic. DFWesque. And hilarious.
Since the 20th century saw an unprecedented growth in government intervention and regulation in the US economy from, the progressive income tax to welfare, social security, FDIC, the creation of a central bank, fiat money, banking regulations, anti-trust laws, workers rights, to the rise of unions, etc., we know that there is no way the conservatives could be referring to the 20th century when they talk about the success of the free market.
So this grand era of free market prosperity must be before the New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society era. Back before the income tax, before regulations, before unions, before the central bank, before federal deposit insurance, before welfare, social security, etc.
You know, the era that gave us:
the Panic of 1797
the Depression of 1807
the Panic of 1819
the Panic of 1837
the Panic of 1857
the Panic of 1873
the Long Depression (1873 – 1896)
the Panic of 1893
the Panic of 1907
the Post-WWI recession
and, of course, the Great Depression.
THAT must be the grand era of unregulated capitalism that worked out so swimmingly.
Shorter Paul, Björn & Jonah: Let’s not change course against the stream of trickle-down that’s taken us this this far…Uh, well not this far, the stream that took us to “prosperity” a couple yrs. So let’s not get off the horse that took us through the shallow water, is what I really…
A couple yrs. “ago,” damnit!! And I blame myself & whichever bastard hasn’t invented Grammar-Check yet! Or reading!
These people are not conservatives. These people are authoritarians. If we keep that in mind, everything they do is boringly predictable – well, it would be boring if we were not in their sights as fodder to be controlled. We need to get away from the notion of a conservative-liberal split in America. Those blasted ultra right-wingers who stole the word “libertarian” complicate this, but the real split is authoritarian-libertarian, if “libertarian” is understood to mean a belief in human liberty based on Enlightenment principles, coupled with an understanding of human dignity that evolved in time out of those principles. The J. Goldbergs of the world believe neither in the basic dignity of all humans, nor in the liberty those people are entitled to. As authoritarians they are guided by fear, and demand a rigid hierarchical structure to relieve those fears. As such they need a leader, a daddy. They need the rich to guide them like a addict needs his fix.
I must be intellectually deficient. I can’t comprehend how you can look at the economy, the rules (or the alteration and/or non-enforcement thereof) that allowed it to get to this point AND the historical data; then still cheer lead for more of the same.
this is excellent analysis. i first learned about the ludicrous conceptions of capitalism that hold that markets can be self-regulating, that markets can “solve problems,” and that regulation is always bad more than a decade ago, and it still astonishes me to hear grownups advancing any of these ideas. (in semi-related news, i remain undecided about whether it was satisfying or just infuriating to hear greenspan concede that perhaps, just perhaps, a totally unregulated market wasn’t always the best thing EVAR.)
gavin, once again you’ve done a great job picking at the intellectual underpinnings of key conservative arguments to expose what’s really being suggested. i commend you, sir.
“Any decline in the outcomes revives the temptation, and a precipitous decline causes it to mount stilts.”
You son of a bitch. What did the English language ever do to you?
“The realistic conservative doesn’t fixate on either reality but always keeps both in mind.”
Is this code for, ‘don’t think about stuff too much, but be sure to bitch loudly and constantly’? I’m pretty sure that’s code for, ‘don’t think about stuff too much, but be sure to bitch loudly and constantly’.
So I’m going to assume that one Mr. Mirengoff is also against such things as speed limits and traffic lights at intersections. Sure, there might be a major multi-car crisis every 70 minutes or so, but the free-driving system can produce astonishing speeds and time-efficient commutes.
the sum total of conservatives’ wants and beliefs has historically, since ‘conservatism’ became a movement rather than a temperament, equated to a sort of small-’f’ fascism, an American ‘free enterprise’ version of what Italy seemed to be in the 1920s, and Germany seemed even better to represent for a brief few years in the 1930s: a system in which the Federal government is represented by a strong and enabled military and a robust security sector, while business interests and individuals of success reigned, according to natural law, over the free market of civil life and culture.
Yes, but it will not satisfy them, it will not be enough. When they try to account for the persistent feelings of dissatisfaction, of emptiness and hunger and yearning that result from emptying out your own soul in order to belong more fully to The Party, it will be someone else’s fault, and then they will be burning with the need to punish that someone and that’s when it gets ugly.
We may well get our “disaster socialism”.
Biden: U.S. Economy in Danger of ‘Absolutely Tanking’
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2008/12/biden-us-econom.html
FYWP
Post-Reagan America is more illustration than the world ever needed that Keynes was onto the right idea: that government by and for the rich whose understanding of economics stopped at the firm would ultimately die on the same sword most firms wind up falling on.
The Chinese economy since around the same time has been steadily growing – and, unless you’re a guy like Thomas Lindsay Friedman* for whom the free market is a law of nature and the only possible explanation for China doing well is its ability to elevate well-meaning mustachioed economists to positions of honored glory over the peons, the only reasonable explanation is that they tax and spend responsibly, and are primarily concerned with constant growth from the bottom up rather than an endless upwards spiral for an increasing few.
Less pure but more democratic examples include most European states and in fact Europe as a whole and India. America’s obsessive indulgence of its financial elite is, along with executing children and the mentally retarded and an active political debate over the meagerest level of federal funding for education, one of several unpleasant things that make us an outlier in the industrialized world. And one day the ruins of Roosevelt’s empire will run out of baubles for us to pick out and parade around like kings in, and Mirengoff will of course blame the Jews.
And because Michelle Malkin has been mentioned (fuck you, thread), by law I am obligated to post a link to a Google search of “obama + “thug thizzle””.
It figures a liberal elitist like you would willfully ignore the glorious contribution of Hayek and Austrian autonomics to humanity: no central planner can have enough information about the operations of any given car to create regulations about traffic. It follows logically that, unless you operate under a perverse Marxist size-class envy, respect for automobilic freedom guarantees my right to do donuts in your yard in my stretch Hummer.
I dunno about you pikers in Vegas, but here in L. A. that would be a stretch Hummer w/ two rear axles & a hot tub on the fantail.
A simple observation of differences, not an assertion of superiority.
I should have stayed in bed. Hokay, I read it and got defuckingpressed thanks Gavin ever so much. What’d I ever do to you? That you didn’t enjoy, I mean.
Anyway, yes Gavin got it right. But here’s the other thing: their “facts” aren’t. The fact is, Mirengoniff has the history exactly backwards.
That every 70 years or so thing? Delusion and/or wishful thinking, that’s all. “The free-market economy can produce astonishing growth for decades, with only brief, minor interruptions.” No.
I think it was Bob Reich who explained (convincingly, in that annoying fact loaded coherent and logical way those fucking liberals do) that the “minor interruptions” have generally been directly due to the market being a wee bit too free. Then the greedy, theiving peasants storm the government and do some remodeling. A few years go by during which time the populace relaxes a bit as things improve (directly due, of course, to the recent remodeling job) and the evil
scientistscapitalists worm their way through the loopholes and gnaw on the newly shorn-up foundations. Lo and behold, another “minor interruption” comes along. Rinse and repeat.Fortunately, as Reich points out, it’s always been more of a three steps forward one back kind of thing. That’s the crux of his “why liberals will win” (in the long run) theory.
Except in the present case, instead of the
termitescapitalists may well have weakened the foundations to the point of collapse – they aint nothing left to build on.Awshit. Is it okay to start drinking (again) at 4 a.m.?
Sure it’s OK. It’s any hour of twenty-four you want it to be somewhere in the world.
My question would be, “Why did you stop drinking in the first place?”
Hey kids, what time is it, anyway?
I stopped drinking in the first place because I was hungry and they didn’t have any decent food at that bar. I most recently stopped drinking at the third place which was/is home because…because…I’m not sure why. Must have run out of gin or the hubby wanted to go to bed or…something.
PS – good to see Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown reverse course on Prop 8.
PPS – can’t sleep?
“The fact that rich people fuck over the working class and poor, especially during hard times, is no reason to abandon conservatism” (Eat the Rich)
“The fact that rich people exercise their freedom and right to fuck over the working class and poor, especially during hard times, is no reason to abandon conservatism and restict freedom“.
Fixed.
Freedom = undue, unelected, unchecked power over others.
Three people in the whole world on S,N! just now and one of them is a lame troll. Is that a new nom de troll for our regular, lame lame lame troll? Whatever. I’m going back to bed.
Not a bad idea.
I just do not understand all the talk about The Market like it’s an actual living thing with feelings. It creeps me the fuck out. The Market isn’t feeling confident today so stock prices are in the tank,or The Market is confident today so stocks are back up. It’s wierd and it makes no fucking sense. Personally,I think it’s designed to make you feel like an idiot so the average person,like me,simply cannot take the time it would take to understand it and won’t ask questions.
I never went to college and I do not get economics at all,but it seems to me that one of the biggest problems is that ALOT of wealth doesn’t really exist. It’s based on made up shit. Very little of this system seems based on actual material goods or tangible things,it’s all out there in the ether and cyberspace.
Things to do Monday: 1) nominate this for a Pulitzer. 2) become a food blogger.
Let’s see, what are some of the “facts” I have heard about the “free market”?
The free market knows all and is infinitely capable creating good things for us, if we only trust it and let it work in its mysterious ways.
The free market will punish us if we do bad socialistic things to interfere with its mysterious ways.
The free market just exists – has always been and will always be.
*Gasp* The Free Market is God!!!!!
Fall down and worship, libruls!!!
Delusional shrubbery.
Just an excellent article, Gavin. Really outstanding. I’ve already forwarded it to two glibertarian friends.
I like that when you click on the Ludlow link (ha-ha-in-your-face), the article is all about how the stupid liberals refuse to admit how great the economy is going, but the ad is asking you to vote for who is to blame for the horrible economy.
(Also the ad’s choices consist of a calm Bush, a calm Paulson and Angry Pelosi. Why is that angry lady so angry? Surely she is to blame!)
The invisible hand has just dropped the ball
And the players scatter like roaches
Still, the crowd persists in believing in the game
Keep your head down and wait for the next big scam
It’s bound to be coming soon
If we all agree this scenario is real
We’ll see Tinkerbell alive again!
What Theron said.
Here is the link that Woprdpress would not let me post.
I suppose the “free market” is like everything else these so-called conservatives hold dear: it never fails, it is only failed, I suppose by patchouli-scented liberals forming a fifth column or some such. Anyhoo, great analysis and presentation as per usual, Gavin.
Daily Dose of Schadenfreude
The state Canvassing Board’s ballot rulings today in the U.S. Senate race has unofficially put challenger Al Franken in the lead by about 250.
Read some of the wingnut comments, and laugh.
Yeah, just some “minor interruptions” that ruin entire families, entire lives. In other words, nothing to see here, move along…move along…..
So I’m going to assume that one Mr. Mirengoff is also against such things as speed limits and traffic lights at intersections. Sure, there might be a major multi-car crisis every 70 minutes or so, but the free-driving system can produce astonishing speeds and time-efficient commutes.
I love this analogy. I’d recommend forwarding it to Mirengoff, but I seriously doubt he can read.
Their professed love of the free market is akin to their Frontier Fantasies, where they are the quick draw gunslinger or something.
But it’s fantasy, people; that’s why it can only be sustained for a two hour movie.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas implicitly recognizes our constitutional right to mount stilts.
that conservatism’s organizing principle, the pinion around which it revolves, is to advance the interests of established wealth; that its method is to indulge Americans’ baser impulses by providing a ceaseless parade of outrages and enemies, a gladiatorial cheering for military adventures, flattery for the ignorant, and certainty for the incurious; and that the sum total of conservatives’ wants and beliefs has historically, since ‘conservatism’ became a movement rather than a temperament, equated to a sort of small-’f’ fascism, an American ‘free enterprise’ version of what Italy seemed to be in the 1920s, and Germany seemed even better to represent for a brief few years in the 1930s: a system in which the Federal government is represented by a strong and enabled military and a robust security sector, while business interests and individuals of success reigned, according to natural law, over the free market of civil life and culture.
I think we can close down the internet, now. It will never get better than this.
Gavin M. @ Top:
AKA, Cerberus.
Associate Dean of “Liberty” “University” “School” of “Law” connects the dots (with a straight line, natch) between Baal worshipers and modern liberals:
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83960
Excerpt:
“Both Obama’s social agenda and that of the 111th Congress are rife with unfettered pro-abortion, freedom-chilling, pro-homosexual and power-grabbing environmentalist objectives. The same kind of ‘hope, action and change,’ I suppose, that was swallowed up by the Baalist Canaanites of old.”
Gotta give him credit for originality.
I ought to confess that I’ve never agreed with the popular view that Jonah is the stupidest stupe in all of Stupidland….I’ve always, actually, thought that he was pretty clever in an underachieving, college-atavistic way, like the characterological ‘good arguer’ who would raise his hand a lot in class, but finesse his research papers and talk his way out of homework assignments.
As a college prof, I have to agree. Every class I’ve ever taught has someone like Jonah in it–a pudgy, unkempt, manchild whose main goal in class is to earn an adequate grade while doing as little work as humanly possible. These people are rarely if ever the dumbest people weakest students in the class, but they are the most frustrating, because it’s essentially impossible to get them to live up to their potential.
In fact, I sometimes think that college profs inadvertently play a role in producing the Jonah Goldbergs of the world. Many kids–perhaps most–come into college with great confidence in their writing abilities, even though they don’t yet know how to produce anything other than a series of regurgitated platitudes backed up with vague citations to the textbook. This method doesn’t (or shouldn’t) work in college, and my colleagues and I tend to respond to it by giving a low grade and explaining as clearly as possible that something more is now required. The best students, who on some level suspected as much anyway, tend to respond by producing much better work. The Kathryn Jean Lopezes of the world will probably never really get it; they’ll compensate by taking easier classes and satisfying themselves with Bs.
The Jonahs of the world–well, that’s a different story. They do understand that something is wrong, if only because they’re not getting very good grades, but they have no intention of emulating the best students, because that’s just too much work and there’s beer to be drunk, Cheetos to be eaten, and Nintendo to be played. Instead, they’ll spend their academic career trying to twist away from the professor’s red pen. Every statement will be qualified and hedged until it’s almost meaningless; that way, if they are called out for making an erroneous statement, they can always point out that they also said the reverse. If their argument leads them to a preposterous conclusion, they won’t rework it; they’ll just delete the conclusion and leave the rest of the argument intact. By the end of the paper (which will almost but not quite reach the minimum length, and will be handed in thirty seconds before the deadline), they’ve produced a few clever turns of phrase, cited the major work in the field, and said absolutely nothing at all.
The trouble is that there’s not much point in unwinding all the false assumptions, empty rhetoric, and shoddy logic of a student like Jonah, because he’s probably just going to glance at the grade and then throw the thing in the garbage–unless, of course, you give him a very bad grade, in which case he has all the time in the world to sit in your office with a sullen look and argue with you. They haven’t learned to think, and they don’t want to; instead, they go through the motions, and that’s enough to get by. It seems to be enough to get by in life as well.
And your golden calf, too!
I find it interesting – but not surprising – that Greenspan’s “finding a flaw” in his own long-held ideology hasn’t gotten more attention. He is one of the quintessential DC wise men. Supported by both parties. Treated as such in the media. But, hey, things collapse fantastically, he says “oops,” and then everybody just moves on. And guys like the PowerTools still bleat on about the free market.
If my sense of outrage hadn’t been permanently damaged over the past years, man, would I be outraged.
The level of stupid in these defenses of the “free market” and the privileges of wealth are like shit piled up to their noses.
1) There are no “free markets.” All markets exist within a complex regulatory frame work which makes them possible. Without that regulatory framework, the market collapses.
2) Even Adam Fucking Smith recognized that the interests of capital and those of society are not the same and may well be antithetical. Therefor he stated society must enact such laws and regulations as necessary to protect itself from the excesses of capital.
3) Ayn Rand was a sociopathic idiot.
My greatest wish is to see these guys file for unemployment and foodstamps.
Mine is to see them living under a bridge and panhandling on a corner in skid row.
These people are not conservatives. These people are authoritarians.
They are and always have been the same fucking thing.
The whole free-market crap concept is based on the notion that laziness and irresponsibility is the best way to operate and no one would ever steal from them.
The best marks to rip off are the free-market people. They are too lazy and irresponsible to actually protect and watch their assets. Which is why the Madoffs and Wall Street morons of the world can time and time again steal billions right under the noses of the free-market fools. Behind every financial scandal and collapse is a free market moron day dreaming with his/her head up their ass.
Trilateral Chairman said,
December 20, 2008 at 18:56
Seconded.
Not at all, Mwangangi–a lot of people have trouble understanding the Reactionary mind. It works basically like this: if someone you have pre-identified as “liberal” or “democrat” suggests a solution to a problem, you must scream at the top of your lungs that it is the Inherent Root Of All Evils Past Present & Future, and something something Hitler something Nazi Germany.
However, if someone you have pre-identified as “conservative” offers the exact same prescription, you must herald it as the Most Visionary and Urgently Needed Solution Ever Proposed.
In a democratic society, the temptation to limit the economic freedom of the well-to-do, and to expropriate their wealth, is great.
I would go so far as to say that it is swell.
Arrest all power-grabbing environmentalist homo-Maoists! Baals to the wall!
I would go so far as to say that it is swell.
It is in fact central to the genius of democracy, as opposed to various authoritarian systems which aggressively suppress this temptation.
Baal, Marx, Mohammed, Darwin… which to worship? Being a liberal is confusing.
Dudes, everybody knows that free market kielbasa tastes better that regulation encumbered kielbasa. Everybody knows that, dudes.
Dear not-Assrocket: you don’t matter. You didn’t matter much when you were wankers for the past half-decade, but you matter even less now.
In a democratic society, the temptation to limit the economic freedom of the well-to-do, and to expropriate their wealth, is great.
I would go so far as to say that it is swell.
You’re preaching to the choir, so pull out all the stops!
That’s right, ORGAN PUNS. Read them and weep bitter tears.
Ok, time out.
mikey needs another definition here.
They use these words in ways that makes no sense to me – someone needs to show me where it says in the rules that any nitwit with an agenda and an internet connection can just arbitrarily redefine english language words. Because when they do that, it makes the whole thing incoherent and almost random. Like if you scattered some corn on a keyboard and let a chicken have lunch, then ran spellcheck.
In this case, the word is “Freedom”. I always see where the right-wing whackjobs are hollering about how one of their core principals is the preservation of “Freedom” and how liberals are always trying to “restrict Freedom” and then they support surveillance, wiretaps, elimination of Habeas, indefinite detention, union busting, laws restricting access to fundamental rights like marriage, and on and on and on. And they rail against “Liberals” for opposing them on these things.
And then, in an unexplained vacuum, they don’t hesitate to once again begin to holler about all the “Freedom” they are for. What freedom would this be? Can we make them say? Can we get them to tell us what they mean when they use the word “Freedom”? Because I just don’t see it.
I saw a wingnut the other day expounding on Guantanamo. He said that “we can’t just bring these people in to the US because they are not entitled to rights we reserve for American citizens”. OWW. That made my head hurt. If we brought them to America, they still wouldn’t BE American citizens, so to whatever extent that’s true, it’s a ludicrous, meaningless argument because, well, it’s just prima facie nonsense.
Why are they allowed to do that?
mikey
Awesome article.
About great weatlh, the bulk, nay, nearly all, of it comes from rentierism, either via direct rentierism from pocketing rent checks from tenants or indirect via the pursuit of a position in wage-amplifying guilds like lawyers and doctors, or the purchase of licenses like copyright and patents.
Georgists call it “seeing the cat” when you can distinguish between capitalism (good) and rentierism (bad). Rentierism is the privatization of the public weal.
Why are they allowed to do that?
Because our corporate press are just as stupid as they are and serve the same economic overlords.
They use these words in ways that makes no sense to me – someone needs to show me where it says in the rules that any nitwit with an agenda and an internet connection can just arbitrarily redefine english language words.
I have submitted your complaint for solutioning, mikey.
Since this is the Christmas season, we should certainly not neglect Satan.
Pottersville’s annual Christmas spectacular is up and this year it’s an extended Assclowns of the Week: The 12 Assclowns of Christmas Edition. Roasting with the chestnuts: George W. Bush; Dick “Twister” Cheney; Rod Blagojevich; Bernard “Ponzi” Madoff; Senate Republicans; Condoleezza Rice and, believe it or not, President-Elect Barack Obama and much, much more.
Ho, ho, ho. Enjoy and happy holidays.
Since this is the Christmas season, we should certainly not neglect Satan.
I acknowledge the Master of Lies every morning before tucking into my aborted fetus omelet.
That’s just a small part of the right’s Great Quest to Invent Their Own Reality.
I think the Right Wing’s copy of the Declaration of Independence reads:
They are and always have been the same fucking thing.
It’s not that they’re the same thing – it’s that authoritarianism is fully a subset of conservatism. In conservatism, your legitimacy is based on your membership in the aristocracy. In authoritarianism, preservation of aristocracy is vested in a strong central government. In what passes for libertarianism, it’s vested in corporations.
Mikey, Freedumb to be an asshat?
Freedom to do as you’re told.
Alt. shorter Jonah: Yes, let’s fix the problems, but let us not be so rash as to do anything (called “meddling”) that would prevent the problems from happening again.
The “free market” they mythologize and long for is analogous to a basketball game without refs and, “ideally,” without rules. Of course at that point it isn’t basketball any more, and the “outcomes” aren’t so great. But they can dream, can’t they?
mikey, they don’t get to do it. They get to try, that’s all. Where they have been largely successful throughout the last painful decade, more and more people lately are recognizing the inanities. It’s a bonfire of the inanities, that’s what it is!
Cheers!
Ayn Rand was a sociopathic idiot.
Look DEMONcrap, don’t make me go all John Galt on you. If I stop commenting, the internets would collapse, so apologize for saying that my dreamgirl Ayn was socially pathetic!
Freedom to do as you’re told.
Freedom from choice.
Oh, I am SO buying the Hollywood rights to this one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1088156/Lost-space-Now-spider-goes-missing-orbital-station-200-miles-Earth.html
Fun fact: Adam Smith literally believed his invisible hand was that of God.
This is a pretty good way to screw with libertarians, although Lord knows they’re not as gloriously refulgent over the stupid God-bothering peasants as they like to think.
Mandatory youtube.
Wealth is power, and power without accountability is tyrranny.
If you translate any free market rhetoric into free sex rhetoric, perhaps wingnuts will better appreciate their own logic:
Here’s Mirengoff: “The free-market economy can produce astonishing growth for decades, with only brief, minor interruptions. But these minor interruptions can become the pretext for significant government intervention. And when a major crisis comes along, every 70 years or so, it becomes the basis for a massive increase in government entanglement in the economy.
This phenomenon isn’t difficult to understand. In a democratic society, the temptation to limit the economic freedom of the well-to-do, and to expropriate their wealth, is great. The temptation is kept in check only because our economic system produces such positive outcomes. Any decline in the outcomes revives the temptation, and a precipitous decline causes it to mount stilts.”
Now try this translation: “A free love approach to sex can produce ecstatic pleasure for decades, with only brief, minor infections. But these minor infections can become the pretext for significant medical intervention. And when a major epidemic comes along, every 70 years or so, it becomes the basis for massive increase in preachy, moralizing entanglement in your sex life.
This phenomenon isn’t difficult to understand. In a democratic society, the temptation to limit the sexual freedom of the well-and-often laid, and to expropriate their mojo, is great. The temptation is kept in check only because our sexual system produces such positive outcomes. Any decline in the outcomes revives the temptation, and precipitous decline causes it to mount stilts.”
All this dirty talk about mounting stilts is giving me wood.
I was about to say that all the talk of mounting stilts makes me think of uncomfortable splinters.
But apparently, one’s mileage may vary.
His oeuvre is as obscure
Ah, Gavin has fixed the typo. You were hoping that we hadn’t noticed.
Of course! We should have looked to Devo for the answers to all our questions, from the beginning.
We feel foolish now.
How to tell Wright from Wrong.
~
We should have looked to Devo for the answers to all our questions, from the beginning.
Go now, my son, and sin no more…
The free market stacked the deck against those of us who favor free markets.
Corrected.
Simply brilliant. Well done and thank you.
RUGGED IN MONTANA said,
December 20, 2008 at 22:08
Oh, I am SO buying the Hollywood rights to this one:
Even more mandatory youtube.
It could be worse – it could be a case of mounting pelicans. Though either one requires taxidermic expertise beyond my ken.
That Jonah et al are are still able to cash in on the pundit gravy train during this catastrophe is beyond hellishly unfair. They should be crushed to bits and scattered on the winds of the gloom and doom their ‘moral support’ helped bring about.
Jennifer is right. This youtube is completely and totally mandatory, which means YOU HAVE TO CLICK IT.
~
taxidermic expertise beyond my ken.
Tell us more about Ken.
Ken’s just some bar fly I know. Or maybe he’s a bar bee, I can’t remember.
Or maybe he’s a bar bee, I can’t remember.
Well, if he “stings”, I think you would remember. 😎
M’am I ride for the Bar B and we got no one called Ken.
M’am I ride for the Bar B and we got no one called Ken.
Down at the Blood Clot we play pool with genuine “Bar B.” cue sticks. Mikey’s an endorser, I believe.
It figures a liberal elitist like you would willfully ignore the glorious contribution of Hayek and Austrian autonomics to humanity: no central planner can have enough information about the operations of any given car to create regulations about traffic. It follows logically that, unless you operate under a perverse Marxist size-class envy, respect for automobilic freedom guarantees my right to do donuts in your yard in my stretch Hummer.
No, but it does argue against the precise light-times for an intersection in Hope Arkansas being set by a committee in DC
Baal, Marx, Mohammed, Darwin… which to worship? Being a liberal is confusing.
I prefer the four-pronged approach, and worship Bamamoda.
Poor wingnuts, the invisible hand stopped giving reacharounds.
I will agree with this, but the incomplete information theorem is both (a) taken as gospel (it doesn’t really follow from observable data, as private regulators’ tendency to let Ponzi schemes and bubbles fly by illustrates) and (b) used as frequently – or more – against committees in Hope than committees in DC.
I can accept incomplete information as an argument for local government, but not for private government. The major difference between public and private is that the latter is going to result in precise light-times for Hope, AR being decided by a committee in New York or Delaware instead of DC. Not exactly an immense improvement, in spite of wild-eyed neoliberal claims to the contrary.
Georgists call it “seeing the cat” when you can distinguish between capitalism (good) and rentierism (bad). Rentierism is the privatization of the public weal.
I thought “seeing the cat” meant they’d changed something in the Matrix!
2 Except when they’re caused by government regulation, poor people, conspiracies of liberals, the Democratic Party, irresponsible liberals and their well-known mania for thoughtless free-market deregulation, or combinations thereof abetted by a conspiracy of the liberal media.”
You forgot unions.
Condom-free sex can produce astonishing enjoyment for months, with only brief, minor interruptions. And when a major pregnancy comes along, every 9 months or so, it becomes the basis for…