Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Conservatism, Culture war, Elitism, Fundamentalism, History
Whenever you hear the phrase “ideas have consequences,” be skeptical. It’s basically a shorthand, designed to conceal the fact that the writer is about to invent his own, fanciful set of consequences for a wholly innocuous set of ideas. So it goes with Thomas Sowell’s new book, Intellectuals and Society, heralded as one of the year’s “hottest conservative titles.” Tragically, Sowell saw fit to blog his book’s thesis, thus depriving us of the pleasure of having to read his tome before commenting on it. Ah well.
On trial in Sowell’s book is nothing less than the entire corpus of knowledge earned during the twentieth century, accused of, quite simply, destroying the century. It’s the kind of affair that would make Q smile.
Naturally the villains, though, are the producers of ideas — the “intellectuals,” a caste of effete liberals who’ve never done a damn bit of good in their sorry lives. Now hold, you may say. Technology cleans our water, protects us from disease, and prolongs our lives. These inventions, and their “intellectual” creators, can’t be naturally evil. True. But technology is a product of ideas, not an idea itself. Ideas are evil, as are their creators and their consequences; their intended physical products, however, are not. Only one who thinks towards a concrete, tangible goal can avoid being reckless, or indeed evil, by generating useless ideas.
All these people [twentieth century engineers] produced a tangible product or service and they were judged by whether those products and services worked. But intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas, and they are usually judged by whether those ideas sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public.
Yes; Thomas Sowell’s “hot conservative title” is an argument against thought for its own sake, be it art, philosophy, or even (one imagines) music, because the consequences of such reckless thinking are unpredictable.
What makes someone write a book like this? We’ve long acknowledged, candidly, that ideas can be dangerous, but the answer has always been (and should always be) temperance and trust. Sowell takes this modern lesson and extracts from it an unresolvable class warfare, between those who keep to themselves, dependent presumably on “common sense,” and those who invent, for better or worse. Is it just anti-elitism run amok? Surely his argument for intellectual complacency deserves NRO’s “conservative” appellation, at least by one definition of the word, but there’s a line between “standing athwart history,” and actively pushing humanity back into the past.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Democracy, Elitism, Fundamentalism, Intellectualism, Law, Limited government, Tea parties
The right’s ever-present critiques of “judicial activism” are probably best understood as expressing discomfort with the notion of the Constitution as a sword, a way of not just halting, but affirmatively rolling back prior encroachments by the majority into the minority’s solace. How curious, then, that Obama’s ascendancy would coincide with conservative attempts to use the Constitution as a means of social change — in the opposite direction, and without the intellectual backing that continues to power the progressive Constitution.
More and more, we hear conservatives tout the Constitution as a document of “limited government,” therefore antithetical to everything President Obama stands for (e.g.). Although we’ve previously addressed that question specifically, and legally, we might be giving our opponents too much credit. While the Constitution does create a “limited government,” no conservative commentator has ever truly traced the logical steps between that point and the conclusion that, say, health care reform would be unconstitutional. Rather, most commentators seem content to rest conservatism’s case on the general sentiment that government is and ought to be “limited,” whatever that means.
For a political theory premised elsewhere on the idea that constitutional “feelings” shouldn’t compel constitutional rules, this intellectual laziness is unforgivable. The “rights” revolution that, over the course of the twentieth century, transformed the Constitution into a profoundly countermajoritarian document relied upon a rigorously intellectual attempt to re-ground the Constitution in democratic theory, addressing its flaws while preserving its strengths. At the movement level, progressive rhetoric on rights has always been accompanied by well-grounded legal arguments, originalist or otherwise. By omitting this intellectual core and proceeding on rhetoric alone, the conservative “limited government” movement manages to do little more than become their own straw-man version of liberalism in reverse.
The Constitution was drafted by men who understood that sentiments and feelings have little meaning unless reduced to rules by which we must all abide. The 20th century’s progressive leaders — those men and women who gave us Brown v. Board, Loving v. Virginia, and a new way of addressing the countermajoritian difficulty — appreciated the distinction. Middle-aged men dressed up as Revolutionary soldiers, waving the Gadsden Flag and wielding Obama/Joker posters, can hardly claim to be the equal of either.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Alliteration, Andrew Jackson, Democracy, Elitism, George Washington, Political rhetoric, Political symbols, Populism, Sarah Palin, William Jennings Bryan
A sequel to the praiseworthy primer, “Palin the Post-Partisan Populist Pals around with Pundits.”
It’s always entertaining to watch Ivy-educated well-connected authors pontificate on the need for common people to tear down Ivy-educated well-connected authors, but Matthew Continetti’s defense of a “new populism” strains even the relaxed standard of credibility applied to such antics. Setting aside factual problems — most Americans still favor healthcare reform, especially with a public option, and stripping power from insurance companies is a profoundly anti-elitist move — the central conceit of the argument, that Sarah Palin stands in unbroken succession with populist luminaries like Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan, is simply a bridge too far.
The first, the last, the best, the Cincinnatus of the West.
The analysis goes awry at the outset. Jackson and Bryan were not just populists, but masters of the art, heirs to a tradition begun in Rome and perfected in America. Classicists will recall Cincinnatus — the farmer-turned-dictator who saved the Republic and, upon completion of his duties, promptly returned to his farm to till his land, spurning the lifetime of fame and fortune that could’ve been his. Like Washington, Jackson and Bryan both drew substantially (if unknowingly) from the Cincinnatus myth. They were brilliant men who could skillfully navigate the halls of power, but chose not to. Visitors to Jackson’s Hermitage (Continetti and I agree, it’s well worth the trip) are treated to a full picture of a deeply intellectual man who, despite partially embracing his opponents’ portrayal of him as an illiterate backwoodsman, maintained a vast library, read and re-read Plutarch, and decorated his home with maps of the growing American Republic. This was a complex man — not a “commoner,” not an “elite,” but something uniquely American. Despite his unfortunate embrace of creationism (and… uh… racism), Bryan was much the same: he maintained the sensibilities of the common man, but advocated for them by taking up the weapons and vestments of the elites.
William Jennings Bryan.
Continetti is right to praise these men, as exemplars of a substantially forgotten American political tradition — the expert statesman who does it because he has to, and never forgets the roots of democracy. However, Continetti misses the mark by putting Palin in their company. Palin, he argues, is their natural successor, misunderstood and maligned by the elites as an uneducated backwater hick. Fine. But there the similarities end. Jackson and Bryan were successful for their ability to walk both worlds — like Cincinattus, they could deploy the knowledge, expertise, and rigorous methodology of the educated elites, but through the perspective of, and to the exclusive service of, the common man. Palin, however, lacks the intellect that transformed Jackson and Bryan into paragons, and Continetti’s “intuitive faith in builders and traders, in hockey moms and plumbers,” is inadequate to supply the deficit, because it is meaningless. What could it possibly mean?
The Palin myth breaks down here, because ultimately, the stereotypes of the contemptible elite and the virtuous but “simple” small town dweller must be unsatisfying. Few elites are actually evil and subversive; and, more importantly, few small-towners are “simple.” The vast majority of Americans, regardless of domicile, are intelligent, profoundly interested men and women, committed to themselves and their country. Only aspirant demagogues like Sarah Palin actually (and gleefully) live the stereotype of the willfully ignorant backwoodsmen. Accordingly, when Palin claims to speak for and embody small town America, we should be offended by the implied insult. The average American, whether she lives in the city or the suburbs, is closer to a Jackson than a Palin, and thank God for that.
Somewhere along the line we decided to sever the parts of the Cincinnatus myth that lies at the heart of American populism: today we call someone a populist for simply identifying with the common man, and to hell with the vigorous competence and record of service that marked the populist movement’s first and finest avatars. To equate a lack of achievements and an utter disinterest in ever attaining distinction with the notion of the American “common man” demeans us all, and dupes us into selecting leaders based on their ability to act, rather than their ability to lead. We deserve better, we are better, and that, ultimately, is why Sarah Palin must fail.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Economics, Elitism, Equality, Jerks, Law, Peter Brown, Securities law, Sexism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court, Wall Street Journal
Over the last week, we’ve written more than a few things about soon-to-be-ex-governor Sarah Palin. Previously, these criticisms by myself or others have triggered in conservatives something we didn’t know they had in them: righteous feminist outrage. Good for them! Even if I disagree with the application to governor Palin – criticizing a woman is not sexist, unless it’s premised on her gender, obviously – it’s nice to see the GOP discover feminism. Too often conservative pundits pigeonhole feminism as a militant philosophy, which is rather like defining Christianity by Fred Phelps. It’s never too late to discover feminism for the big-tent, inoffensive, simple philosophy that it is to so many Americans. We hope they keep it up.
Sadly, by the current evidence, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Ever. Check out the Wall Street Journal’s latest super-substantive criticism of the Judge:
Her net worth of $740,000 is a third of what the last new Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito, brought to the bench, and he had only worked previously in government or as a judge. That’s not much of a nest egg, given her salary and opportunities. [. . .]
And the way she spends her money does tell us something about a woman who will rule on the most cases involving business, labor and capital. Simply put, Ms. Sotomayor’s behavior would make a financial planner cringe. [. . .] She has been the model of financial disinterest. [. . .]
She owns no stocks or bonds. [. . .]
As she goes through confirmation hearings beginning next Monday, lawmakers are unlikely to ask why she has not accumulated more financial assets. It’s an interesting question to ponder, but the senators likely will turn to sexier topics. That’s too bad, because how one handles money is something to which everyone can relate.
On the surface, this “critique” is obnoxious only for its apparent snobbery, containing within it the presumption that someone who has practiced and adjudicated complex securities disputes somehow doesn’t understand the capital markets, because she’s never been personally involved in them. But I think something far more nefarious is at work here — an attempt to play off the old sexist stereotype of the spendthrift woman (see above, right). Take your cues from the conspicuous use of gender terms (“…a woman who will rule on…”), as much as the simple fact that, without more, Judge Sotomayor’s finances couldn’t be less relevant to her competence as a federal judge.
One has to imagine that, if Peter Brown actually cared about Judge Sotomayor’s record on cases implicating the capital markets, he could have turned to her case law. As a judge sitting in first the SDNY and then the Second Circuit, she’s ruled on, and written opinions on, no small number of important “money” cases, and reviewed all with a competency that her opponents would find thoroughly uninteresting. See, e.g., Press v. Quick & Reilly, Inc., 218 F.3d 121 (2000) (applying antifraud liability to a case of first impression, concerning broker/dealer disclosures) and U.S. v. Falcone, 257 F.3d 226 (2001) (canvassing insider trading rules). Securities is not an easy field of law, especially these days, when lawyers and judges must be as much investment bankers as jurists. In fact, I submit that a federal judge sitting in New York, and hearing these cases daily for twenty years, probably has a better grasp on it than a mere columnist.
Presumably, if Brown cared enough to look beyond his brandy snifter and actually confront Judge Sotomayor on her record, he’d have something novel to say about the intersection of her jurisprudence with the capital markets. But since he can’t be bothered to do so, we’re left with this useless & vaguely insulting article. Is this the best the Journal can do?
