Posted on 01/04/2007 8:22:17 AM PST by IrishMike
Politics is about passions as well as ideas and the passion that has dominated American politics for at least a decade is anger. Conservatives got worked up over Clinton; Democrats got worked up over Clintons impeachment; and Gores slow motion concession in the 2000 election set the stage for the Lefts six long years of gathering rage. Early in 2006, a furious debate broke out between Republicans and Democrats, each accusing the other of harboring excesses of anger. ............ When I discuss the Lefts embrace of New Anger with people across the political spectrum, two not very satisfactory explanations keep coming up. One is that the party that is out of power has more to gripe about. Yes, but that doesnt explain why the Left gravitated to a form of anger that exacerbated its unpopularity. Nor, why the Right, in similar circumstances kept its New Anger aficionados on the margins.
The other explanation that comes up, almost always from people on the Left, is that the extreme anger has an extreme cause. It is President Bushs fault, because he has provoked beyond measure everyone outside his own Right-wing extremist base. According to this view, those on the Left who have resorted to flamboyant expressions of anger have done so because they are dealing with a historically unprecedented destruction by President Bush of the governing norms of American political discourse.
I think this explanation is even more dubious, requiring as it does a broad caricature of how President Bush has governed.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
The lefties get angry when they are out of power because they believe that it is their ordained place to rule over us out here who are too stupid to know what is good for us.
Bingo!
...The newspapers and pamphlets of 1800 are full of Jeremiads, hard-hitting satire, and libelous personal attacks, and the writers give the impression (usually behind the mask of a pseudonym) of enjoying the rollicking pleasure of their verbal extravagance.OK; that's a readily understandable and clearly stated distinction. However, he then quotes "anonymous libertarian responding on a message board to a comment by Jonah Goldberg":
But there it stops. As far as I can tell, the partisan writings of 1800 never venture into the logic of, "Listen to me because I am really, really angry," or, "The extremity of my anger proves the righteousness of my cause," or, "Behold my disdain! It is a thing of wonder." Those are some of the ways to tell the difference between the traditional forms of political anger and New Anger in its political manifestations....
Yeah, I'm going to take advice from Jonah Goldberg about how the conservatives are more friendly to liberty.OK; clearly an example of the sort of "Jeremiads" and "hard-hitting satire" Adams' and Jefferson's partisans launched at each other back in the day. (It clearly does not suggest any real identification of Goldberg with a wife-beating husband, and so doesn't qualify for the category of "libelous personal attacks".)
"Don't go looking for someone who doesn't beat you honey. Nobody else loves you like I do. Especially not that suave Democrat. He'll just beat you worse. Trust me. I can change, we just need counseling."
Just say no to Battered Voter Syndrome.
However, for some reason he doesn't attempt to explain, the author somehow categorizes this as "New Anger-ish vituperation", though not even Penumbral Emanation Spectacles, or even a Penumbral Emanation Hubble Telescope, could find any trace of a suggestion that the author is asserting that his anger proves his rightness.
Well, duh, you idiot! :-).
Perhaps that is the influence of Ayn Rand, or maybe it comes from the conviction that libertarians see the pure light of rationality but are doomed to be ruled by their purblind inferiors.
I really wish I could argue with this (because I tend to be argumentative), but that hit dead on.
Its simple, Lefties are spoiled little children, who never really grow up.
Liberaltarians are simply Leftists in all respects other than taxation and business regulation. Socially, they are Leftist radicals.
Wood's probably right about Brink Lindsay and Jonathan Chait, but those guys don't matter at all. It's the big picture which does.
If you're a writer for Reason or the Cato Institute you want to promote libertarianism and get libertarianism's nose in one of the big political tents in a major way, so you'd naturally promote such alliances. And if you're a writer at the New Republic you have to maintain the value of the property or franchise.
You have to promote "liberalism" or your own or your paper's version of "liberalism" so that you still have an influence. So of course you'll slight those who undercut your foundational myths (though you don't have to be nasty about it).
What you may see in the future is a socially entrepreneurial liberalism that's less connected to the current power bases of liberal ideology and the Democratic Party. But you can count on established liberals to fight such developments.
Here is a good dust up that deals more with the actual Chait/Lindsey liberal libertarian argument than the "anger" thing(which I could't give a damn about).
"Many have remarked on the tension in the coalition of religious traditionalists and libertarians on social views. But I've never really understood why religious voters would be partial to free market economic policies. There seems to be an obvious distrust of the amorality of the market there, especially as it often produces what religious voters obviously consider to be immoral entertainment and other products. Nor have I ever seen among religious folks a particular appreciation of the invisible hand process of the market, as their worldview seems much more comfortable with a constructivist rationalism than spontaneous order systems. To the extent that there is a coherent economic philosophy here, it seems to me that it is more naturally communitarian than free market. This is consistent with the more specific policy observations that religious voters seem perfectly content with economic policies like farm subsidies, steel tariffs, immigration limits, and distrust of the WTO and other international trade organizations. Note also that during this past election, support for ballot initiatives that increased the minimum wage drew overwhelming support in the red states on which they were proposed. That doesn't seem very consistent with a free-market worldview."
http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1165247590.shtml
Thanks for the link.
Great list. Incomplete...but no human could possibly be expected to name them all.
Liberals and libertarians have no business together and they both know it. It's a bluff.
Nanny state Social engineers + freedom fighters = mushroom cloud.
Just like liberals and evangelicals have no business together.
Secular progressives + God fearing people = mushroom cloud.
Who are they kidding?
Rather than insult them, let's try to educate them first:
Here's an interview with some former actor named Ron from 1975. It might help.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29318.html
REAGAN: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberalsif we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Now, I cant say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we dont each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.
I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I am tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility [
Thats ok Chait. I hate you and all of your despicable democrat brethren. And if you guys try to drag us into abject socialisim the way you did in 1992-1994 then you will be pushing the county towards a new civil war. There I've said it.
GOP, I'm a Reagan/Goldwater conservative.
These libertarian threads are really thought provoking and that's why I asked Travis to include me. Just like any other democracy or parliamentary system on the planet earth, you need people in your camp who don't necesarily agree with everything you say or do, but believe that you are the lesser of two evils.
Point is: if there is a stop bashing Libertarian ping list...join it.
btt for later
Makes sense. Now explain why they are so angry when they're in power.
Only thing I can figure is that we the sheeple just will not STFU and follow along the way we are supposed to. Either that or they are upset that their economic and social policies really do not work, which kind of ties in with the first point come to think of it...
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