by Damozel | I have always loved P.J.'s early writing for its wit and most of all its detachment; I own several of his books and often dip into them. I honestly don't care how wrong he is or how much he seems to hate me personally as long as he can make me laugh out loud.
His full-on Rush-mode cri de coeur in The Weekly Standard---We Blew It (which: yeah)-- is him preaching to the choir, and in an apparent state of wild despair, so you have to cut through a lot of ranting to get to the parts that are awesome. So we'll ignore the ranting and focus on the awesome, while pointing and laughing at the parts that require it.
And because I want to be fair to my beloved P.J., I have to say: if the conservative movement---including his hero, Reagan---had followed P.J.'s old fashioned pre-neoconservative conservatism, we probably wouldn't be in the mess we're in. That is to say: we would still be in a mess, but it would be a completely different, lesser, easier-to-come-back-from sort of mess.
Like most conservatives, O'Rourke can't bring himself to face the obvious fact that the brand of conservatism they enabled and fostered and reaffirmed in 2004 clearly doesn't work. Maybe in another and simpler time, but not now. I realize that it must be very painful to have been shown up as so wrong about...well, everything. But before they can start to heal, they need to admit that their policies have failed.
But let's take a look at some of the specifics of O'Rourke's argument.
After a whole page or so of Limbaugh-like disputation and reality-free gibbering abusing liberalism and all liberals---e.g., calling his liberal fans like me stupid and evil and insane and venal and out of touch with reality--P.J. gets down to cases. Where did conservatives go wrong? How did they manage to convert the "glorious" Reagan legacy of unrestrained greed and corporate dominance into the current tragic and epic failure of the ultra-conservative Bush administration?
Bush is, of course, the inevitable outcome of exactly the sort of conservatism O'Rourke and other dinosaurs like him---unchecked by reality or close observation of the ways in wish the world is changing---wished on America, but fine....let's consider whether it's possible to restore a less toxic form of conservatism. And P.J.--who makes it sound so possible and so benign---is the expert, not me. How did the conservative movement destroy itself?
I've omitted the serial insults to liberals and progressives and related bloviations because you can read those at any third rate right-wing blog. After all, he's writing in The Weekly Standard, so he's directing his preachments to the converted. And at this point, incendiary language is all they have left.
In how many ways did we fail conservatism? And who can count that high? Take just one example of our unconserved tendency to poke our noses into other people's business: abortion. Democracy--be it howsoever conservative--is a manifestation of the will of the people. We may argue with the people as a man may argue with his wife, but in the end we must submit to the fact of being married. Get a pro-life friend drunk to the truth-telling stage and ask him what happens if his 14-year-old gets knocked up. What if it's rape? Some people truly have the courage of their convictions. I don't know if I'm one of them. I might kill the baby. I will kill the boy.
The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets....
If the citizenry insists that abortion remain legal--and, in a passive and conflicted way, the citizenry seems to be doing so--then give the issue a rest. Meanwhile we can, with the public's blessing, refuse to spend taxpayers' money on killing, circumscribe the timing and method of taking a human life, make sure parental consent is obtained when underage girls are involved, and tar and feather teenage boys and run them out of town on a rail. The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani....(Weekly Standard)
Giuliani? That's a laugh.
Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many of them could be kept by Giuliani or any typical hot-headed red-faced war-mongering right-winger: starting with "You shall not murder." Go back and read the portion of the article I just quoted about rape and O'Rourke's (typical) rant about taking vengeance and the law into his own hands. Then think of Bush and the Iraq War. Think about the conservative movement's hunger for vengeance and its contrasting mawkish sentimentality about stem cells and the unborn contrasted with its ruthless indifference to the flawed, feckless, prone-to-fail born.
But of course there are other commandments. Consider the injunctions against coveting and theft (Wall Street bailout, anyone? Halliburton and war profiteering?) and Christ's strident inveighing against hypocrisy. But never mind those.
And never mind most of all, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," which Christ said is one of the two principles on which God's law depends. (All of modern conservatism is a denial of that commandment.)
Despite all this, I have to laugh out loud with delight at the dead-on accuracy at what P.J. is saying between the lines: because, TRUE: Republicans are not in a position to "enforce" the commandments, even though they often try, invariably revealing their own hypocrisy.
Oh, but speaking of hypocrisy:
Our impeachment of President Clinton was another example of placing the wrong political emphasis on personal matters. We impeached Clinton for lying to the government. To our surprise the electorate gave us cold comfort. Lying to the government: It's called April 15th. And we accused Clinton of lying about sex, which all men spend their lives doing, starting at 15 bragging about things we haven't done yet, then on to fibbing about things we are doing, and winding up with prevarications about things we no longer can do(Weekly Standard).
I've omitted the nasty over the top rant about Clinton being a brute and detestable because after George W. Bush....really? Really, P.J.? These blind and crazy lapses of logic, and the inability of conservatives to hold themselves to the standards on which they hold those with whom they disagree, is one reason why the conservatism for which P.J. stands is dead or moribund (good riddance).
Here's more:
But are we men and women of principle?
Me! Me! Call on me! I know the answer! I know! I--- oh, all right. Carry on.
And I don't mean in the matter of tricky and private concerns like gay marriage. Civil marriage is an issue of contract law. A constitutional amendment against gay marriage? I don't get it. How about a constitutional amendment against first marriages? Now we're talking. No, I speak, once again, of the geological foundations of conservatism.
Where was the meum and the tuum in our shakedown of Washington lobbyists? It took a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives 40 years--from 1954 to 1994--to get that corrupt and arrogant. And we managed it in just 12. (Who says Republicans don't have much on the ball?) (Weekly Standard)
Nobody's going to hear me defend Congressional Dems as a group, though I'd stand up for some of them (Leahy, Waxman, a few assorted others, and a few Republicans such as Specter). But the Bush Administration and
Now this next part is a little bit funny, as well as true.
Our attitude toward immigration has been repulsive. Are we not pro-life?
Wait, I have to stop and answer that.
Uh, no. Or rather, yes---so long as the life is still tiny and innocuous and safely tucked away inside someone's womb where it can't offend conservatives by having any needs---such as the need to be decently fed, housed, clothed, and educated, and having access to medical care when ill. Needs, by the way, that its eventual parents or parent might be too young, too dumb, too feckless, or too poor to meet properly.
But anyway: immigrants and immigration, Republican style!
Our attitude toward immigration has been repulsive. Are we not pro-life?
Are not immigrants alive? Unfortunately, no, a lot of them aren't after attempting to cross our borders. Conservative immigration policies are as stupid as conservative attitudes are gross. Fence the border and give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry. Put the National Guard on the Rio Grande and know that U.S. troops are standing between you and yard care. George W. Bush, at his most beneficent, said if illegal immigrants wanted citizenship they would have to do three things: Pay taxes, learn English, and work in a meaningful job. Bush doesn't meet two out of three of those qualifications. And where would you rather eat? At a Vietnamese restaurant? Or in the Ayn Rand Café? Hey, waiter, are the burgers any good? Atlas shrugged. (We would, however, be able to have a smoke at the latter establishment.)(Weekly Standard)
On to the economic crisis, Wall Street, and the free market!
P.J. seems to feel that the Wall Street crisis is the fault of
liberals who--as it is well known--are all about putting money into the
pockets of the housing and financial industries. Yeah, "the ownership
society" was a liberal idea. (I don't think so---I am fifty and I live
in an apartment with my husband. We have one car, a Ford Focus,
because one car is all we need.)
Anyway, I have to laugh out loud when he rants that liberals don't have a clue what's happening on Wall Street. Do conservatives?
The ones I read or speak to don't have a clue. And if they did know, and did understand it, which they didn't...why would they have let it happen?
O'Rourke does seem to think some of the blame for the economic crisis lies with conservatives. Not that he thinks Wall Street should be answerable. Wall Street owes those who put their wealth into its hands nothing, not common decency, fiduciary or ethical responsibility, or even a promise not to convert their hard-earned money into wealth for their CEO's. No. O'Rourke argues---are you ready for this?---that conservatives should have intervened because they have been the guardians of the "rule of law" since 1980.
As always, if you dig through the manure, you'll find a pony, to deploy the metaphor he uses himself. He seems to recognize that letting Wall Street carry on unchecked and without accountability ("transparency") played some role in our current ills.
Wall Street was pulling the "room full of horse s--" trick. Brokerages were saying, "We're going to sell you a room full of horse s--. And with that much horse s--, you just know there's a pony in there somewhere."
Anyway, it's no use blaming Wall Street. Blaming Wall Street for being greedy is like scolding defensive linemen for being big and aggressive. The people on Wall Street never claimed to be public servants. They took no oath of office. They're in it for the money. We pay them to be in it for the money. We don't want our retirement accounts to get a 2 percent return. (Although that sounds pretty good at the moment.) (Weekly Standard)
Oh really?
Presented for your consideration:
AIG Execs Re-Distributed Shareholder Wealth to Themselves
Executives Took Home Millions While Driving Companies (and our Economy) into Ditch
Risky Buys Were Not Fannie CEO's Fault (Though He Got $38 Million for His Efforts)?
Those who wonder where their tax dollars are going should also take note Deb's postings on war profiteering.
But give O'Rourke this. He is willing to own that conservatives had some share of responsibility. Liberals, he argues---meaning me, I guess--are too stupid to understand the awesomeness of "the free market" so it was down to conservatives to keep the housing bubble from blowing up and exploding in a gummy mess all over the world economy's face.
We, the conservatives, who do understand the free market, had the responsibility to--as it were--foreclose upon this mess. The market is a measurement, but that measuring does not work to the advantage of a nation or its citizens unless the assessments of volume, circumference, and weight are conducted with transparency and under the rule of law. We've had the rule of law largely in our hands since 1980. Where is the transparency? It's one more job we botched. (Weekly Standard)
"We've had the rule of law largely in our hands since 1980"-- ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I've heard that one before, but it's a good one, and it always makes me laugh.
Because when Bill Clinton lied about Lewinsky, Democrats lost the moral high ground FOREVAH. Even W's war crimes, lies, defiance of the constitution, etc., etc. couldn't reclaim the moral high ground from the conservatives who elected him. They'll always have Clinton to kick around!
But don't run away, fellow liberals. Because the great part of this piece---P.J. at his angriest and funniest---is when he lays into the foreign policy initiatives that have got America so cordially detested all over the world.
Since the early 1980s I've been present at the conception (to use the polite term) of many of our foreign policy initiatives. Iran-contra was about as smart as using the U.S. Postal Service to get weapons to anti-Communists. And I notice Danny Ortega is back in power anyway. I had a look into the eyes of the future rulers of Afghanistan at a sura in Peshawar as the Soviets were withdrawing from Kabul. I would rather have had a beer with Leonid Brezhnev.
Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.
The aftermath of the Gulf war still makes me sick. Fine to save the fat, greedy Kuwaitis and the arrogant, grasping house of Saud, but to hell with the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq until they get some oil.
Then, half a generation later, when we returned with our armies, we expected to be greeted as liberators. And, damn it, we were. I was in Baghdad in April 2003. People were glad to see us, until they noticed that we'd forgotten to bring along any personnel or provisions to feed or doctor the survivors of shock and awe or to get their electricity and water running again. After that they got huffy and began stuffing dynamite down their pants before consulting with the occupying forces....
Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world's rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we've been doing of that lately.)
If we do have morals, where were they while Bosnians were slaughtered? And where were we while Clinton dithered over the massacres in Kosovo and decided, at last, to send the Serbs a message: Mess with the United States and we'll wait six months, then bomb the country next to you. Of Rwanda, I cannot bear to think, let alone jest. (Weekly Standard)
Ah yes, our foreign policy is morally bankrupt because Bill Clinton failed to step up to the plate and make war when the circumstances clearly required it. Well, you get no argument from me there. But eight years have passed since Clinton's various flaws and failings drove our nation's foreign policy.
But conservatives are still trying to trace all our ills to Bill Clinton's doorstep.
Yes, my conservative compatriots, you keep telling yourself that. As long as you do, nothing will ever change, and you will consider that long, discreditable slide into irrelevance.
Cf. P.J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell, still a tour de force after all these years and massive changes. It's still a good read. The world has changed, sure---but not out of all recognition.
He ends on a sour note, in the manner of the newly emergent John and Jane Galts who are threatening to leave the country, withdraw their valuable services (few of which involve creating new jobs or the means of production, so whatever), or--it is sometimes implied--commit ritual suicide to escape the liberal hell the American public has wished on them.
Although I must say we're doing good work on our final task--attaching the garden hose to our car's exhaust pipe and running it in through a vent window. Barack and Michelle will be by in a moment with some subsidized ethanol to top up our gas tank. And then we can turn the key
Oh, P.J. What price being "pro life" now? I guess anything's better than being asked to pay a few more dollars per month in tax.
But it's true: conservatism as it's evolved is down and twitching like a dying fish. It would be tempting to give it a good, hard kick to put it out of its misery.
But even if I were appointed to do that, and had the power, I wouldn't.
Both sides need to stop being so angry and realize that the factors that make a person liberal or conservative are actually fairly complicated and that the definitions of those words is in fact evolving all the time.
To quote a right-wing comedian my daddy liked a lot back in the Sixties, and whose name currently escapes me, "You gotta have right and left, because an airplane can't fly with just one wing." If P.J. and his liberal-hating pals had ever stopped to remember this, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now.
I hope they'll get their heads out, and start realizing that their fellow Americans are not the enemy: just fellow Americans who see things differently. Then maybe we could get something done.
Frankly, the hatred started on their side, so I think they need to be the first to dial it back. But I ain't holding my breath.
But I'm thinking Obama will set a good example in this respect. And when he does, most of his supporters will doubtless follow along. As The Heretik notes here, their only hope is that we will be more gracious to them than they were to us.
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Well, D, you nailed P.J.'s "state of wild despair," but considering that he's recently been diagnosed with cancer, this might be one of those instances where the personal is political. A man pondering the grave who reacts to political disaster with less than perfect equanimity is to be forgiven much. I've taken exception to some of his specific assertions, but I'm not up to doing a sack dance on the man, considering (a) he's fighting the Big C, and (b) I've been sucking down cigarettes since age 14.
Posted by: Robert Stacy McCain | November 09, 2008 at 10:04 PM
I didn't know that and it makes me very sad to hear it. He remains one of my favorite political writers, even when he is going out of his way to hurt my feelings.
Posted by: Damozel | November 09, 2008 at 10:34 PM