Last comment was referring back to PNH's most recent, in case that isn't clear.
Yeah, OK, I can see where that's coming from. I'm a little more optimistic than that, but only a little. When I say that I don't know where we should be building alliances, I mean it - I just don't know where and how. None of the options on the table now look appetizing to me - compromise with libertarians (but this would involve gutting commitments that are fundamental to the left as I see it)? Get into bed with religious conservatives? (there's more in common with them than one might think - but again, it's deeply problematic). I guess the only way that we're going to win is by changing the public argument back to one which we can win - but how to do that, I don't know. I've been reading Rick Perlstein's "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus" the last few weeks, which makes a good start at telling us how they did it to us. But only after they spent their forty years in the wilderness.
Returning to the original topic, here's a simpler and more straightforward defence of Kevin's response - "Dr. Maturin" was acting like an asshole. I copy (with PNH's permission and encouragement), an extract from an email that I sent him below.
My personal reaction was that "Dr. Maturin" was behaving like a complete asshole. He effectively accused Kevin of being a sellout, before saying that he was going to delink him (modern equivalent of scratching someone's name out of the family bible). On a purely personal level, I'd have probably responded in more or less the same way as Kevin did - except that I would have been considerably ruder. As you say, it's neither extraordinary or unexceptionable that people are looking for validation or reinforcement; but if this makes them act like jerks, they act like jerks. They don't deserve any more respect than Kevin gave.
Patrick, what I mean by "reasoned approach" here (maybe the wrong word) is something that can win over someone who's sitting on the fence, rather than reinforcing the priors of someone who's already on-side. I don't doubt for one moment that Duncan Black is incredibly smart, but he doesn't see himself, I don't think, as being in the business of reasoned persuasion of those who aren't already persuaded. On those occasions when he does set out more detailed arguments (as he has done in fairness several times in the Social Security debate), he does a fantastic job. But it's not the bread-and-butter of his blogging.
Scott, I think you're setting up another misleading dichotomy here. I don't know that anyone's been arguing for the position that "liberals must always take pains to avoid the uneeemly appearance of excessive passion or disagreement." Certainly I haven't. Nor has Kevin. Neither of us have been shy to hide our disgust at, say, Glenn Reynolds' behavior over Ward Churchill, or at Powerline, or at where the general policies of the Republican party are leading us. I'm also completely at sea as to how Kevin's decision to invite Dan to guest-blog might possibly be considered a concession to the "they" that you are talking about (or is it?). Has Dan ever ranted or complained about the lack of "reasonable liberals?" No - he's argued with them sometimes, sometimes agreed with them. He's also voted for Kerry.
I think that this particular argument is sort-of-somehow connected to a more general argument about the extent to which winning politically involves not only ministering to your own supporters, but also building coalitions with people who aren't a natural part of your constituency. The latter may feel uncomfortable - but it's a necessary part of politics. The European Social Democratic parties kept on getting hammered in the polls in the first part of this century until they figured out that the working class was never going to give them a majority vote, and they had to create alliances with the middle class. I think that there's a similar level of discomfort here - but it's something that we have to work on. I'm not sure where we should be building those alliances, but arguing with, and engaging with, people who aren't quite on our side, but aren't implacably opposed to us, is a crucial part of figuring that out.
After having posted the last, I've just seen Patrick's follow up. I don't want to get into a row - Patrick's someone who I admire in more ways than I can say - but I do want to state my position. I'm not wanting to come off like I'm coming down to correct the hoi polloi. First (as Grant very fairly gives me grief for), I'm an academic. This means certain things. If I'm to take it seriously, it means that I'm committed to argument above everything else, and to taking very seriously the position of people who have radically different political goals than I have. It's pretty different from political activism, and when I blog, it's a sometimes uneasy mixture of the two. But I can't be as wholeheartedly committed to the fight as I would be if I were a straightforward political activist. Take that as a statement of my limitations. Second, of course I acknowledge a vital role for Kos or Atrios type activism. Not what I do - and I sometimes have problems with the specifics of what they do and say - but it's absolutely a necessary part of politics. But; and this is the third part; it's not the only part. The kind of stuff which Kevin does is as important as what Kos does - and in contrast to Kos, he can't do it if he cleaves too closely to his commenters. His commenters are not who his audience should be. There's a real value to a more reasoned, more tempered, more argued approach that would be completely lost if he listened too closely to what his commenters are saying. And the kind of thing he does is just as vital as what Kos does. The recent fight against the gutting of Social Security is a good example. The kinds of directly partisan cheerleading and targetting of weak spots that Atrios and (in a different way) Josh Marshall did were key, but so too were the more reasoned, detailed arguments of people like Kevin, Matt Yglesias and Brad DeLong. They helped move the journalists away from the "social security is doomed" shtick and sway debate.
And while we're on the subject of apologies, my crack that "to claim that popular left wing blogs need to humbly beg pardon from their readers when they don't is pretty indefensible." comes across about fifty times snottier than I intended, and is flat out wrong to boot. The reader should be aware that this isn't one of those phony 'agree in private emails to an exchange of apologies' agreements - it's a flat out admission on my part of having seriously misstated Patrick's position on this.
Patrick - what you wanted to say may have seemed crystal clear to you, but it doesn't come across in the post. When you start talking about " left-of-center Americans who don’t happen to have nice insider gigs working for liberal magazines" and pointing to the ruthlessness of the "modern American right wing" as an example to emulate, you're not giving business advice; or if you are, you're giving the wrong impression. You're doing a remarkably convincing impression of telling Kevin what he should be doing to help build up the American left wing. And bluntly, I think it's completely the wrong advice. The job of the Washington Monthly isn't to keep tens of thousands of left wing blog readers happy; it's to change policy debates. Different job than Kos or Atrios - as Kevin says, he doesn't blog every day in order to get people's outrage up, and never has. He blogs to influence people. Getting people's dander up yeah; it's important. But they also serve who speak in reasoned tones. They've got a better chance of persuading those who haven't already been persuaded. If you really want to understand how the right has won so many victories in the last couple of decades, Rush Limbaugh and his kind are only a part of the story. It's people in the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation who have succeeded in changing the broader policy debate through speaking in the tones of sweet reason. The target audience of the Washington Monthly isn't Kevin's commenters - it's the same audience as the AEI etc. Policy wonks, journalists and decision makers in Washington. Raw partisan meat and easy gotchas isn't going to work for that audience.
Let me register a strong dissent (nb that Dan's both a collaborator and a friend of mine, so I'm not unbiased). Seems to me that you have three beefs here.
(1)That Dan is a cardcarrying Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Bush apologist. Wrong. He's pretty unique among the prominent right wing bloggers in that he argued himself around to voting for Kerry. And made it public. He's not, under any reasonable definition of the term, a right wing hack. He's susceptible to changing his mind. You may not agree with him - but he emphatically doesn't see his job as a blogger as playing defense for the Republican party administration). He's not on the other side in the sense that you say he is.
(2) That Kevin Drum should be devoting himself to the business of providing raw partisan beef to his readers. That isn't, and shouldn't be the only function of left wing blogs. Gung-ho partisan cheerleading has its place - but to claim that popular left wing blogs need to humbly beg pardon from their readers when they don't is pretty indefensible. Yeah, the fact that we argue and listen to some of the people on the other side is a political weakness; but it's what makes the left worthwhile in the first place. And "Dr. Maturin" was talking smack. Dan Drezner isn't remotely comparable to Reynolds or LGF.
(3) That there's an unhealthy clubbiness among "big bloggers" who sometimes act like they have more in common with each other than with their readers or smaller bloggers. Here, I think you have a point. But Kevin isn't an offender. He hasn't used his blog to try and launch himself into the world of talking head punditry, and he hasn't been afraid to pull his punches with excrescences like Glenn Reynolds.
Nope - I'm not out of my mind at all, far as I can tell. If you go back and look at my comment I'm saying that I agree with Xeni in principle and _not_ in presentation, and that I agree with you that the Soviet style presentation doesn't make good political sense. But it looked to me like your original post had two different arguments kind-of tangled up together in there. One is that presenting "free culture" as Soviet kitsch is a bad idea. I agree. The other is that presenting "free culture" as revolutionary is a bad idea. On this, I disagree. I guess what I'm saying is that a bit of leftwing revolutionary fervour seems to this expatriate Irishman to be as American, tasty and wholesome as apple pie. Mind you, as I've said before, my opinions on this are partly your fault anyway - I first started thinking about this stuff after having my mind quietly blown during that breakfast conversation in Toronto.
Count me in on Xeni's side on this one, in principle, if not in presentation. I'm increasingly convinced that the "free culture" movement could, and should, be revolutionary in its implications - it's maybe the best thing to hit the left in the last twenty years, if the left will only wake up to it. Which isn't to say that the Soviet riff makes good political sense - but free culture is, and should be revolutionary. In other words, it should be all-American in exactly the same sense as Eugene Debs, Joe Hill and Woodie Guthrie were all-American.
Jason diParle's "American Dream," which I'm finding fascinating - both as an account of welfare reform, and of how completely disconnected abstract policy debates are from real people's lives. A good corrective for ivory towers types like meself. Will be posting something on Crooked Timber soon-ish if anyone's interested.
Larry - all you need for an Irish passport is one grandparent born in the Republic or in Northern Ireland, plus birth certs showing that you're descended from the grandparent in question. Where you're getting hung up is that you have to apply for citizenship rather than getting it automatically - but the application procedure is straightforward, and provided that you can show that you are who you say you are, has a 100% success rate. For further info, see http://www.irelandemb.org/fbr.html . Not that I want to encourage Americans to leave - there's a fight to be fought - but there's no harm in having it as an option for dire emergencies (plus you get the short queues when coming through immigration when you fly into any EU country.
The one thing that gave me some small bit of hope for the future was seeing Barack Obama talk (he gave a short interview on CNN in the wee hours). He seemed to me to have many of Clinton's best qualities (a razor sharp brain, ability to connect) together with a degree of dignity and humility that Clinton never had. I hope and believe that he's going to be President one day, and that in contrast to the current jerk, he's genuinely going to be a uniter, not a divider.
A commenter at CT posted a bit of Pope which says what I'd like to say.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap’d o’er her head!
Philosophy, that lean’d on Heav’n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d;
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 10 |
| 2004 | 4 |
Total: 14 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Henry:
Show all comments by Henry.