Ready to rumble? Village Voice Author, Rick Perlstein, Here to Debate the Freeper Horde

08/03/2004 | Rick Perlstein

[rbmillerjr]

"...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.

[MamaLucci]

I would like to see an actual answer to ANY of the questions on this thread by Mr. Perlstein.

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.

[bondjamesbond]

Rick Perlstein is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

[Brad’s Gramma]

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.

[Teacher317]

Here's one from Rush: Please name six reasons why you will vote for Kerry for President.

(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.")

[Quilla]

Shocking, positively shocking. ;-)

[AppyPappy]

who thinks I should have to respond to the guy who holds me personally responsible for Pol Pot and Janet Reno's raid in Waco?

Why not? We do. I'm personally responsible for the cruel rape of Lucrecia.

[cyncooper]

Crystal ball? Time travel?

Open your eyes, my good man (I assume you're male) and see what there is to be seen.

[BenLurkin]

Mr. Perlstein,

The photo on the right was of Tienmen Square, not Waco!

An interesting confusion on your part.

As for holding you personally responsible, we know you yourself did not do these things. The question is how anyone could be a "proud leftist".

The left, globally, (since, around 1848) has been a force for chaos, totalitarianism and social debasement. It is inimical to the enlightenment era concepts upon which our nation was founded.

[Perlstein]

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.

[veronica]

I definitely won't have time to give my sense of the matter, but I certainly have seen evidence that, say, paleocon critics of Bush have not been made to feel welcome here.

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...

[weegee]

A sadist says "no" when he/she knows that it will bring "torture" to the masochist by denying him/her pain.

[StarCMC]

Why's FR so slow on this, my big debate day, by the way?

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.

[jjbrouwer]

This is perhaps the only thread Lazamataz hasn't posted on. Do you think he missed it?

[ableChair]

Perlstein writes:

Wow, Big B, this is going to range all over the place. It means a lot of things to be a "liberal" But my most recent Voice article gives a pretty good sense of what I think liberals should be up to now--what should be at the center of the project: "n the last few decades we've seen a structural shift as tectonic in its way as the sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War. Where in the 30 years or so following World War II, a period of Democratic dominance, the real income of the average American literally doubled—meaning that rural families who once kept outhouses on their property were now able to keep a garage—in the 30 years that followed that same average income stagnated, the amount of individual debt exceeding that of individual savings. It happened coincident with a slow and steady rise in Republican dominance, now nearly complete, as corporations were awarded more and more prerogatives. It's gotten worse. From 2000 to 2002, according to the IRS, the average American income dropped 9.2 percent—and the last time incomes fell in this way for even one year was 1953. "A visionary party of opposition—you might even say a competent party of opposition—would place fixing inequality and stagnating incomes at the center of its political appeal."

_____________________________

And the Sophistry goes on...

Let me help. Liberalism today is nothing more than selfish popular faction and no longer constitutes a legitimate ideology worth taking seriously. JFK's liberalism was a legitimate ideology worthy of debate, but no longer.

Your reference to economic and material indicators is nothing more than disinformation. I can quote lots of statistics on crime, single-parent homes, poverty (as defined by your boy LBJ), inflation, unemployment, etc. that skyrocketed in the 60's and 70's; all occuring under the stewardship of the New Left and New Deal politics. Your comparison is ridiculous. You and your ilk continue to argue economic and social principles that have been tried worldwide, from the USSR to Pol Pot, and the results have been disastrous. You still don't get it. A political 'ideology' built on the 'coalition' of a melange of selfish popular factions, each one one-dimensionally and insouciantly pursuing it's own self-interests, regardless of what harm it may cause society as a whole, will and has been the undoing of popular governments since the dawn of civilization. You know this. James Madison wrote directly about this problem and Alexander Hamilton was sure that Madison's weak Federalism could not resist it's corrosive effects.

"Fixing inequality" was tried by Stalin, and millions were murdered. Government can't 'fix' inequality without a brutal application of force. Your implicit assumption that it can is ridiculous. Any reasonably numerate person who can understand methodologies and statistics can see that. People are intrinsically different and some will succeed where others will not. That's human nature. Government does not alleviate "stagnating incomes", people do. But government can certainly make matters worse, an argument for the negative with which I abide. Your socialist boy FDR showed us that, from his irresponsible creation of the income tax to his attempts to eliminate the Supreme Court as an obstacle to his totalitarian designs. I would suggest you read E.O.Wilson's "Sociobiology, the new synthesis" as a good starting point to explain to you why Marxism, and socialist concepts of wealth redistribution, run directly counter to what is known in biology as "reciprocal altruism", something leftists have completely distorted and most don't understand. In case you don't understand what I mean by human nature, think "reciprocal altruism". In other words, Marx's "surplus value" that you implicitly support as your "stagnating incomes" and "fixing inequality" remarks show, is scientific fraud...sophistry.

But for selfish faction these comments are just lovely: Rob Peter to pay Paul and any selfish individual who has no concept of things greater than himself will love you.

Thank God Madison is back and the New Left is out. We are experiencing a conservative realignment and your ideas are old, tired and tuckered out. Deal.

[Cogadh na Sith]

who thinks I should have to respond to the guy who holds me personally responsible for Pol Pot and Janet Reno's raid in Waco? I'm willing if you think I should.

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....

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Here I am. Who'll have the opening shot?

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.

[Teacher317]

Quick vote: who thinks I should have to respond to the guy who holds me personally responsible for Pol Pot and Janet Reno's raid in Waco? I'm willing if you think I should.

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.

[PaulaB]

Rick,
I find it refreshing that you are here....here are some questions that I have that makes me ignorant of how anyone can call themselves liberal....notice I did NOT say Democrat. There is a huge difference

1. How can someone confess to be a catholic and be pro-abortion and pro-homosexual when his faith clearly states it is not to happen (The Bible)
2. Doesn't this show you that Kerry will give up anything to win including his morals and values? Doesn't that scare you..what else would he give up? Our freedom?
3. How can you vote for anyone that is pro UN? Haven't we proven that the UN is a corrupt modern day mafia not looking out for the good of anyone except their bank accounts?
4. How can you be against the war in Iraq? I understand that you think this administration is a modern day cowboy show but you know that Saddam had WMD..also I thought liberals were for humanity. How does letting his sons rape and kill anyone at their whim sit with you? Taking young girls away from their parents and there was nothing they could do to stop them..that alone should have sent us in to kill that %^&* along with his evil sons.
5. Last but not least...I think those like yourself really dislike Bush because he symbolizes living for Jesus Christ. You and others like you are rebelling because you live in an alternate reality that whatever feels good you do it. I pray Rick that you will ask Christ into your heart and turn your skill into something more.

May God Bless You Sir