What Is Occupy Wall Street? Exactly?

Occupy Wall Street more left-wing Tea Party than Arab Spring

Writing in an op/ed for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg turns his attention to a persistent movement that cannot be ignored: the self-styled Occupy Wall Street movement.

Goldberg seems to enjoy the naive precociousness of the movement. There's little question about that.

But Goldberg seems to nearly overlook what, at this point, is the most important question of all: what, precisely, is Occupy Wall Street? It's not as ridiculous a question as it may seem. They haven't really been clear.

"I don’t think this thing has nearly the legs its boosters do. For starters, for all the talk about this being the US version of the Arab Spring (a disgusting, and idiotic, anti-American slander by the way), at least the Arabs were smart enough to start the Arab Spring in the Spring! These bozos chose the fall which means it’s only going to get colder. No doubt some will hold out in their urban yurts for as long as it takes, but that self-anointed avant garde of the campus proletariat is going to get lonely when it starts to snow (of course they could all migrate south for the winter)."

The "Arab Spring" notion is a vain idea shared by many far-left protesters with delusions of persecution. Canadian human bobblehead Brigette DePape has taken a certain pleasure in being compared to Arab Spring activists, neglecting to consider the fact that she was at no threat of violence, unlike Libyan activists who were at risk of airstrikes.

Likewise with the Occupy Wall Street activists. They are at positively no risk of even a sideways glance from law enforcement until they do something stupid like attempt to block the Brooklyn Bridge.

So, no. Occupy Wall Street is not the Arab Spring. Nor do they truly represent 99% of anyone, let alone Americans. As Goldberg muses -- and he is absolutely correct -- the very notion is utterly comical.

If anything, Occupy Wall Street is the left-wing Tea Party.

They'll certainly refuse to admit it. They'll even feign indignant outrage at the very suggestion. But it's true, and the conclusion is unavoidable.

Like the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street will learn how difficult it is to produce a coherent message from so many divergent ideas. They'll learn how easy it is to be typecast by the most extreme among them; although many would likely find that the average extremism index -- if there were such a thing -- would be sky-high in the Wall Street Occupation movement compared to the average member of the Tea Party.

And while the mainstream media won't be as willingly complicit in the demonization of Occupy Wall Street, they will eventually learn what it is to be demonized. Some of them will deserve it; many of them will not. Unfortunately, that demonization has become an occupational hazard for grassroots movements in the US.

Just ask the Tea Party.

The Politics of Judgement and the Judgement of Politics

The attempted coup d'etat against US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has long been a part of United States political lore.

The argument is that a group of conspirators, magnates of big business, allegedly admiring the techniques adopted by Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, attempted to utilize a mid-depression movement of discontented World War One veterans to overthrow Roosevelt in an effort to head off the New Deal.

The players in the plot circled around an embittered Marine General, a disgruntled former Democrat Presidential candidate, and a collection of tycoons who allegedly intended to usher in a fascist regime in the United States.

The case brought against them is actually rather unconvincing. Despite the revelations offered by General Smedley Butler, no one was ever charged for the plot.

There seems to be little concrete evidence.

Yet many conservatives would argue that Roosevelt himself was exceeding the powers alotted to the government by the United States constitution. To this end -- not respecting the limits of government as defined by the highest, most fundamental law of the land -- many of them (such as Jonah Goldberg) would actually argue that it was Roosevelt who was leading the United States toward fascism.

It's a similar argument to the one currently playing itself out in relation to US President Barack Obama.

There may be some credence to the argument. It's limited credence, but it may well be there. After all, a rejection of the legally-defined powers of the government is one condition that is necessary for fascism to flourish.

What emerges is the dilemma of the politics of judgement, and how it affects the judgement of politics. Considering that communism and fascism were both movements very active in the Depression era, many find it believable to suggest that a fascist plot was underway. Many others may find it believable to suggest that the plotters were merely patriots resisting the implimentation of an allegedly-unconstitutional socialist and statist agenda (socialism and statism being central to both communism and fascism).

Many will simply read their own politics into the matter. If it's ideologically convenient to judge the plotters as fascists, they judge the alleged plotters as fascists. If it's ideologically convenient to brand them as patriots (if clearly self-interested patriots) and FDR as a soft tyrant (in the lexology offered by Mark Levin), they will do that instead.

The ultimate truth of the matter has long been taken to the grave by all of those involved. While it makes for interesting political intrigue, it makes for an even better case study in how we allow the politics judgement to effect the judgement of politics.

Stephen Colbert, Jonah Goldberg & The Politics of Irony

Colbert blurs lines between fiction & reality in testimony

When comedic pundit Stephen Colbert testified before the US Congressional Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security, he provided everything that one expects of a typical Colbert performance.

In the words of National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg, "he pretends to be what many liberals claim Bill O’Reilly is. That’s the joke. Get it?"

It isn't necessarily that simple.

"The real upshot of Colbert’s shtick is that he’s mocking people who disagree with him -- or with the left-wing base of the Democratic party -- on the complicated issue of immigration," Goldberg continues.

"Colbert’s testimony reduced the topic to a black-and-white issue in which people on the other side are fools or bigots worthy of cheap mockery," Goldberg writes. "I thought the whole point of Colbert was to stand against that sort of thing by making fun of it, not by doing it. Are our politics really improved by making congressional hearings even more of a joke? Were they truthiness-deficient?"

Not all of Goldberg's complaints are necessarily well-founded. Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University, is right to have noted that illegal immigration depresses wages and lends itself to deteriorating working conditions.

Then again, Colbert didn't testify in favour of illegal immigration. He testified in favour of legal immigration, suggesting that the US government should act to facilitate legal immigration by making it easier to acquire a work visa. All in all, a sensible proposal.

This doesn't, however, answer the question of whether or not it should have been considered permissable for Colbert to testify in-character before a Congressional subcommittee. Certainly, Colbert's fans expect certain things of him -- then again, so did the Representatives who called him to offer testimony.

They expected Stephen Colbert to testify in good faith. He demonstrably did not. Unfortunately, this may harm the credibility of his testimony -- although in all honesty, it shouldn't.

It Must Be Great to Be Able to Have Everything Both Ways

Effort to use Times Square bomb plot to demonize Tea Party movement doesn't end with non-tea partier suspect

In the immediate aftermath of the foiled Times Square bomb plot, the minds of many people around the world turned to the question of who may have been behind it.

Many presumed that the perpetrator must have been an Islamic terrorist. Based on the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, one would expect that these people have the right to feel vindicated.

Not so, according to Salon.com's Alex Parent, who is holding a grudge at the relief expressed by Jonah Goldberg that the perpetrator of the act "wasn't white":

"The bloggers at National Review's The Corner can barely conceal their glee that the man arrested this morning for attempted terror is a proper foreign-born Muslim dude, and not a God-fearing white Christian. Jonah Goldberg admits as much:

When the Times Square story first broke there was a part of me that said, 'Man, I hope it's not some white militia nutjob.' When I saw the news this morning that it was a Pakistani, the same small part of me was relieved.

A normal human might be relieved that the person responsible for the attempted bombing is in custody. Jonah is just relieved that his prejudices against Muslims were reinforced."

That could have been the case -- maybe. Or maybe it's more likely that Goldberg was worried about efforts by left-wingers to accuse the Tea Party movement of being responsible for the plot:

That was a cached page from Yahoo! answers. The following is a comment plucked off of TPM Muckraker (do they ever):

So this is the rhetorical world that Alex Parent inhabits: if early reports indicate that the suspect is middle-aged and white, it's entirely fair to surmise that the perpetrator might be a Tea Partier (or Tea Bagger, in the juvenile parlance of the left).

If the perpetrator turns out to be a Pakistani allgedly attempting to avenge the deat of a Taliban leader, it's unfair for the Tea Party movement and its supporters to feel vindicated.

It's a similar rhetorical trick as the demagogue who accuses an individual of being racist if they don't believe that racial epithets have been spat at an African American legislator.

It must be nice to be entitled to have everything both ways -- particularly when it's yourself who's decided that you're entitled to have it so.

Avatar's Riddle of Religion

As it pertains to Avatar, the newest science fiction masterpiece from James Cameron, there are largely two ongoing themes of discussion.

One is the magnificence of Cameron's technical achievement. He blends new technology with conventional 3D film making and traditional film making in a not-quite-seamless fashion that has transcended anything the medium of film has offered to date.

The other topic of discussion surrounding Avatar -- which is still selling out theatres more than a month after its release -- is that of the religious overtunes of the film.

In the film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic marine whose twin brother, a scientist, has been shot during a random mugging. The company for which he works needs Jake to take his brother's place on Pandora, an alien world where they are mining unobtanium, an extravantly expensive electronic superconductor.

Through the help of high technology, Sully will inhabit his brother's Avatar -- a ten-foot body cloned through the combination of alien and human DNA. This will enable him to interact with the natives.

His most direct purpose is to help Dr Grace Augustine (Signourney Weaver) conduct her combination of scientific research and missionary work on Pandora. However, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) has another idea in mind. He wants to use Sully's experience as a reconaissance expert to gather intelligence on the Na'Vi Home Tree.

On his first mission out, Sully is separated from his party and encounters Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a Na'Vi hunter who is eventually convinced through the act of "very pure spirits" to take Sully with her to Home Tree, where she is ordered to instruct him in the ways of the Na'Vi.

In time, Sully comes to cherish the ways of the Na'Vi, becomes one of them, and helps turn back the human assault on their way of life.

Writing in various fora, Jonah Goldberg has noted how closely Cameron's fictional creation resembles the findings of Nicholas Wade:

"Nicholas Wade's new book, The Faith Instinct, lucidly compiles the scientific evidence supporting something philosophers have known for ages: Humans are hard-wired to believe in the transcendent. That transcendence can be divine or simply Kantian, a notion of something unknowable from mere experience. Either way, in the words of philosopher Will Herberg, 'Man is homo religiosus, by 'nature' religious: as much as he needs food to eat or air to breathe, he needs a faith for living.'

Wade argues that the Darwinian evolution of man depended not only on individual natural selection but also on the natural selection of groups. And groups that subscribe to a religious worldview are more apt to survive -- and hence pass on their genes. Religious rules impose moral norms that facilitate collective survival in the name of a 'cause larger than yourself,' to use a modern locution. It's no wonder that everything from altruism to martyrdom is inextricably bound up in virtually every religion."

However, as Goldberg notes, this sense of altruism can be exploited for some rather sinister purposes:

"The faith instinct may be baked into our genes, but it is also profoundly malleable. Robespierre, the French revolutionary who wanted to replace Christianity with a new 'age of reason,' emphatically sought to exploit what he called the 'religious instinct which imprints upon our souls the idea of a sanction given to moral precepts by a power that is higher than man.'"

Although the rationalized exploitation of these themes aren't restricted to those with malevolent intentions:

"Many environmentalists are quite open about their desire to turn their cause into a religious imperative akin to the plight of the Na'Vi, hence Al Gore's uncontroversial insistence that global warming is a 'spiritual challenge to all of humanity.' The symbolism and rhetoric behind much of Barack Obama's campaign was overtly religious at times, as when he proclaimed that 'we are the ones we've been waiting for' -- a line that could have come straight out of the mouths of Cameron's Na'Vi."

"What I find fascinating, and infuriating, is how the culture war debate is routinely described by antagonists on both sides as a conflict between the religious and the un-religious," Goldberg concludes. "The faith instinct manifests itself across the ideological spectrum, even if it masquerades as something else."

Some should consider it amazing that Huffington Post contributor Jason Linkins could be critical of Goldberg while simultaneously missing the point.

"I have not seen this movie but based upon what I've heard about it, what Goldberg calls the 'unapologetic' religious content of Avatar is 'unapologetic' for precisely one reason -- it needs to be plainly stated in order to serve as a plot contrivance," Linkins wrote. "And what seems to be going on in Avatar (reminder and caveat: have not seen it!) is that the Na'Vi's high-powered enviro-god religion is there to serve as the force that closes the gap between the primitive alien race and the technologically advanced military might of their invaders. The religion seems to be baked into the movie so that Cameron can tell a good story, and not to indulge in what sci-fi wonk par excellence Ana Marie Cox would call 'frenetic code mangling.'"

But if he had waited until he had seen the movie, Linkins would have understood that the religious overtones of Avatar are more than a mere "plot contrivance". The religious overtones are so powerful because, in the film there is something to it. Not only does the All Mother intervenes directly before the film's end, but the All Mother is the central reson why the Na'Vi are rejecting the colonialist advances of the Earthlings in the first place.

In Pandora they have everything they need, and in the All Mother they have everything they want.

The act that historical individuals like Robespierre accomplished was to deny individuals who could not find what they wanted within the social framework that he favoured -- the French revolutionary order -- the opportunity to seek what they wanted out of life outside of that order (at least not without paying the expense of their lives).

Many would consider the social order envisioned by the most radical environmentalists to also deny people the opportunity to pursue their wants or needs outside of a strict environmentalist order. Although, unlike Robespierre, their intentions are largely benign.

The Na'Vi, for their part, are entirely benevolent. But benevolent intentions can be turned toward malevolent ends, and even faiths as powerful and benign as that of the Na'Vi can be twisted to such purposes.

We don't see this from the Na'Vi in Avatar, nor have humans had the opportunity to observe it in similar spiritual and religious structures in the real world.

But if humans could observe a world like Pandoa over a period of thousands of years, it would be intriguing to see what kind of events may occur. We may even discover that animist societies could be just as imperiled by dangerous social forces as any other.

The Patron Saints of Fascism?

When The Boondock Saints was released in 1999, it was largely to critical derision.

In time, the film would grow into a cult classic. In ten years time, the film would finally merit a sequel. While the film has garnered itself a considerable following, there are messages at the core of the film that, while actually quite common in films of its genre, can actually be rather troubling.

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg writes about the fascist messages that can be detected in vigilante movies like Dirty Harry and Death Wish.

Boondock Saints contains many of the core themes of other vigilante movies: the corrupting power of outsiders to a society (in this case, the Russian Mafia) and the corrupting influence of the state's weakness.

Boondock Saints takes these messages even further.

In the film, the McMannus brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) find themselves the targets of the Russian mob when they get into a fight with enforcers trying to close down their favourite watering hole.

After killing the mobsters in self-defence, the two highly-religious brothers receive a vision and a mission from God. They're declared to be the new protectors of the innocent in Boston. They're to liquidate the Russian mob.

The film generously mixes religious iconography with a message regarding the inadequacies of the state to deal with dangerous, external, and often alien enemies.

More interesting still is the eventual decision of FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), the forensic detective assigned to catch the Saints, to become an accomplice of the Saints. Like many citizens portrayed in interview at the end of the film, Smecker views the state as ill-prepared to handle the criminal element in Boston.

However, even as an agent of the state, Smecker has begun to have more faith in the McMannus brothers' ability to deal with crime, and has thusly decided to join them.

Smecker thus facilitates one of the elements necessary to the development of a fascist state -- the subversion of the state by fascist elements.

In its closing credits, the film also reveals one of the more troubling elements of this particular brand of vigilantism: its tendency to evoke these kinds of sympathies among individuals who, like Smecker, have lost faith in the state's ability to manage these challenges.

These sympathies can make fascism oddly appealing, and therein lies the greatest danger of vigilantism.

Films like Boondock Saints make for splendid entertainment, and there very much is some value in the message of these films. But the value in the films must be carefully weighed against the deeper implications of the film, and those implications must be considered accordingly.

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 3

In a recent bit of unintentional comedy genius, Enormous Thriving Plants Audrey insists Glenn Beck is "flinging poop at the wall", and "desperately hoping some of it will stick".

The comedy becomes evident when one considers that this is actually Audrey's approach to blogging, and especially to the topic of Jonah Goldberg.

In a recent post at her blog, Audrey makes one of her patented "criticisms without an actual criticism" of Goldberg.

Which, of course, necessitates drawing attention back to her mockery of Liberal Fascism, and another one of Audrey's great criticisms without an actual criticism.

While Audrey seems to delight in taking potshots at Goldberg when she thinks she can gain rhetorical advantage, the truth is that she has little familiarity with what Goldberg's ideas are at all -- mostly because she's stridently refused to familiarize themselves with them at all. The case in point is Liberal Fascism.

Audrey has been perfectly content to echo the far-left line of feigning offense at the book. Yet Liberal Fascism contains many criticisms of conservatism as well.

Perhaps most pointedly is Goldberg's criticism of former US President George W Bush. Goldberg criticizes Bush harshly for his flirtations with the Protestant Social Gospel that informs so many left-wing progressive movements.

Goldberg refers to this brand of "conservative statism" as "me too conservatism". To underscore this criticism, Golderb quotes a Bush speech in which the former President annonced "when somebody's hurts, government has got to move". Goldberg treats this comment as an implication that government has an overarching responsibility to alleviate human wanting through its activity.

In her exporations of fascism, Hannah Arendt famously wrote about the notion of "human omnipotence", as exercised through the state. Goldberg alludes to this same notion in relation to Bush's version of conservative statism.

In other words, Goldberg notes, the fascist notion of human ominipotence that lies at the core of fascist ideology isn't merely an ideological and philosophical dilemma for progressives alone -- the same dilemma confronts conservatives as well, and just as liberals have to be wary of this trap, so do conservatives.

In a proper intellectual response to a work like Liberal Fascism, a caveat like this wouldn't go undetected.

But truth be told, intellectualism is hard work. As for Audrey, she's simply too intellectually lazy to bother.

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 2

When a blogger insists that they're reaching to to an "intellectually mature" audience, one also imagines that it isn't too much to ask for that blogger to actually discuss the ideas they would like to critique.

It seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation.

Such is the expectation that an intellectually mature audience should expect of Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey, who has apparently taken quite the exception to the ideas of Jonah Goldberg.

Unfortunately, the problem for Audrey is that she continues to neglect to offer any kind of a cogent criticism of Goldberg's work, and has instead simply opted to ridicule it (possibly not understanding that ridicule is actually not an argument).

As mentioned during a previous attempt to coax Audrey into offering a more cogent critique of Goldberg's work by sharing with her some details of what his book actually contains, Goldberg also offers a critique of some fascist elements within conservative thought, including noting the fascist characteristics of some movies typically enjoyed by conservatives.

One of those movies is Death Wish. Like Dirty Harry, Death Wish spawned a whole series of sequels, creating a film franchise in which a vigilante exposes the inadequacies of the social order.

In Death Wish, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is an ordinary man whose wife and daughter are both killed during a home invasion. The police prove incapable of brining the guilty to justice, so Kersey doggedly pursues the guilty on his own.

Like in Dirty Harry, the social order in the Death Wish franchise has been subverted by weakness, and that weakness allows violent outsiders to flourish.

Moreover, these outsiders -- very often (but not always) members of racial minorities -- excel at turning the weakness of the system against itself. In Death Wish IV an elderly man uses a gun to drive home invaders from his apartment. His assailants call the police, who come and seize his gun under a handgun ban in the city. The very same night, his assailants return and murder his wife.

Dirty Harry's Harry Calahan can at least defend himself under the pretext of being an authority of the system. Paul Kersey is a vigilante, pure and simple.

His actions are even more threatening to the system than Calahan's, as he operates entirely outside of it. As a result, Kersey's actions may have even greater potential to be truly transformative.

Neither Dirty Harry nor Death Wish seem like films that liberals would enjoy. Jonah Goldberg admits as much in his book. Individuals like Audrey may have known about this if they had read the book.

But they evidently haven't. It's the kind of thing that should seriously call into question their ability to criticize his work.

It should, but considering that the best rhetoric they can muster to date is to accuse him of "doubling down on dumb", one shouldn't expect an argument that demonstrates any actual knowledge of Goldberg's arguments. At least not until after a lot more coaxing.

...And speaking of "doubling down on dumb", this is an individual who apparently thinks that the proper way to approach Goldberg's work is to mock him for ignorance of "astrological phenomonon" like the Jovian gravity well. And presumably, Taurus.

Softening the Hard Right Turn

To succeed, the Republican Party needs moderate conservatives

Writing recently in the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg notes that many American left-wingers believe these are very, very good times for them.

Why are these very, very good times for the left wing? Certainly not because they're implementing their agenda on issues like health care reform. As Goldberg notes, and certain less-than-gifted bloggers are more than willing to confirm, many left-wingers -- particularly socialist progressives -- think these are good times for them only because they believe the conservative cupboard to be effectively bare:

"If there's one thing liberal pundits are experts on these days, it's the sorry state of conservatism. The airwaves and the Op-Ed pages brim with more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger lamentations on the GOP's failure to get with President Obama's program, the party's inevitable demographic demise and its thralldom to the demonic deities of the right -- Limbaugh, Beck, Palin.

Such sages as the New York Times' Sam Tanenhaus and Frank Rich insist that the right is out of ideas. After all, the religious dogmatism and 'market fundamentalism' of the Bush administration were entirely discredited, leaving the GOP with its intellectual cupboard bare.

'During the two terms of George W Bush,' Tanenhaus declares in his latest book, 'conservative ideas were not merely tested but also pursued with dogmatic fixity.'

Even worse than being brain dead, the right is blackhearted, hating good-and-fair Obama for his skin color and obvious do-goodery."

The idea of ideological civil war among conservatives was even enough to distract various left-wing thinkers and commentators from what was then the then-impending defeat of two Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia which are being said to effectively cast a pall over Barack Obama as he plots his next move forward.

"The same voices seem eager to cast Republican Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the congressional race in New York's 23rd District not only as proof that their interpretation is correct; they're also determined to cast it as a far more important news story than the Democrats' parlous standing with the voters. Don't look at the potential historic gubernatorial blowout in Virginia, or the Jon Corzine train wreck in the New Jersey election, or the flocking of independents to the GOP in the major races. No, let's all titter and gape at the cannibalistic 'civil war' on the right."

Just as Goldberg notes in Liberal Fascism, many of these commentators have naturally drawn comparisons between what is currently going on within conservative circles with fascism -- in this case, Joseph Stalin.

As Goldberg notes, it's just one of many such allusions that is particularly troubled:

"Frank Rich, gifted psephologist, finds the perfect parallel to the GOP's squabbles in Stalin's murderous purges.

'Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators,' Rich writes, 'it is they who are reenacting Stalinism in full purge mode.' Stalin's 'full purge mode' involved the systematized exile and slaughter of hundreds of thousands (not counting his genocide of millions). The GOP's purge has so far caused one very liberal Republican to halt her bid for Congress."

Indeed, Goldberg wants to offer a different explanation altogether:

"Let me offer a counter-theory, admittedly lacking in such color but making up for it with evidence and consideration of what conservatives actually believe.

After 15 or 20 years of steady moderation, many conservatives think it might be time to give their ideas a try.

Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' was promoted as an alternative to traditional conservatism. Bush promised to be a 'different kind of Republican,' and he kept that promise. He advocated government activism, and he put our money where his mouth was. He federalized education with No Child Left Behind -- coauthored by Teddy Kennedy -- and oversaw the biggest increase in education spending (58%) in history, according to the Heritage Foundation, while doing next to nothing to advance the conservative idea known as school choice.

With the prescription drug benefit, he created the biggest new entitlement since the Great Society (Obama is poised to topple that record). He increased spending on the National Institutes of Health by 36% and international aid by 74%, according to Heritage. He oversaw the largest, most porktacular farm bills ever. He signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a massive new regulation of Wall Street. His administration defended affirmative action before the Supreme Court. He pushed amnesty for immigrants, raised steel tariffs, supported Title IX and signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

Oh, and he, not Obama, initiated the first bailouts and TARP.

Now, not all of these positions were wrong or indefensible. But the notion that Bush pursued conservative ideas with 'dogmatic fixity' is dogmatic nonsense."

Indeed, in Liberal Fascism, Goldberg argues that in George W Bush's speeches one can find firmly entrenched the ideals of the Protestant Social Gospel.

Indeed, Bush belongs to the United Methodist Church (prior to 1977 he was an Episcopalian). The United Methodist Church fuses the outreach of the social gospel with the personal holiness aspect of traditional Evengelical churches.

This firm belief in human charity is an often-overlooked side of Bush:

"Most Democrats were blinded to all of this because of their anger over the Iraq war and an often irrational hatred of Bush. Republicans, meanwhile, defended Bush far more than they would have had it not been for 9/11 and the hysteria of his enemies."

One could argue further that many of Bush's opponents were indeed deeply ideologically invested in ignoring these elements of his political identity.

But Bush left behind him a particularly toxic political environment -- much of which was the doing of his supporters, and much of which was the doing of his opponents -- and left the Republicans and Democrats alike facing a stark dilemma:

"In 2008, the primaries lacked a Bush proxy who could have siphoned off much of the discontent on the right. Moreover, the party made the political calculation that John McCain -- another unorthodox and inconsistent conservative -- was the best candidate to beat Obama."

Moreover, the opponents of George W Bush campaigned against John McCain as if he himself were Bush.

When Obama defeated McCain in the election, much of the triumphal reaction was seeped in the language of electoral vengeance -- this despite the fact that had not (and still haven't) beaten Bush, but instead defeated a candidate who was at least partially selected for his ability to reach out to moderate and conservative Democrats.

But, as Goldberg himself notes, the Republicans may have miscalcuated the will of their base to sacrifice their ideological expectations and adhere to the Republican brand.

"In short, conservatives have had to not only put up with a lot of moderation and ideological flexibility, we've had to endure nearly a decade of taunting from gargoyles insisting that the GOP is run by crazed radicals.

Now the rank and file might be wrong to want to get back to basics, but I don't think so. With Obama racing to transform America into a European welfare state fueled by terrifying deficit spending, this seems like a good moment to argue for limited government.

Oh, and a little forgiveness, please, for not trusting the judgment of the experts who insist they know what's happening on the racist, paranoid, market fundamentalist, Stalinist right."

What Goldberg seems to be suggesting is that many American conservatives have tired of the "big tent" vision of conservatism pursued by the Republican Party.

What he doesn't seem to understand is the perils of abandoning that particular model. And while the Republican Gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia (both states that went firmly in favour of Barack Obama in 2008) are indeed illustrative of the current state of the Democratic Party, the victory of Democrat Bill Owens very much does present this dilemma in all its glory.

When the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava quit this particular election and supported Owens, the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, enjoyed a brief surge. Many conservatives -- and many conservative media commentators -- believed he could win the race in a lock.

But Scozzafava's exit from the race added a lot of undecided voters to the mix. On election night they decided to follow Scozzafava's lead and support Owens. The hard conservative vote in the district wasn't enough to secure a victory for Hoffman.

The lesson the episode offers is a very simple one: there aren't enough hard conservative voters in the United States to guarantee a victory for a hard conservative Republican Party, or even for a Conservative Party with no Republican opponents.

While hard conservative voters have proven to be enough to get the Republicans in the game, so to speak, they need moderate voters to put them over the top. That means moderating their conservative ideology in recognition that, yes, there are voters in the United States other than merely conservatives, and, yes, they deserve to be heard too, and not just by the Democrats or the Green Party.

A strong argument certainly does exist for the need for Republicans to harden their conservative policies. One could easily argue that Republican brass has been spooked by the taunting (as Goldberg puts it) of progressive socialists who declare anyone who isn't as far left as they are to be of the "extreme right".

But conservatives -- and especially not the Republican Party -- cannot afford to harden their conservative policies at the expense of being able to reach out to political moderates.

To do this is political suicide, regardless of whether or not American conservatives think this is "their turn".

Waking the (Un)Dead, Part 1

Jonah Goldberg stirred up something of a controversy when he published Liberal Fascism.

The expressed goal of the book is to counter arguments that modern conservatism is essentially fascist in nature by pointing out that modern liberalism shares an intellectual ancestry with fascism.

Recently, certain individuals in the blogosphere have been making a point out of expressing their bemusement at his work.

In Liberal Fascism, Goldberg argues that modern liberalism -- better described as socialist progressivism -- shares key elements of the intellectual origins of fascism.

The counter-argument, as is advanced by many outraged left-wingers, is that Goldberg singles out the left and attempts to declare them guilty by association.

But this raises the question as to whether or not those complaining about Goldberg's work in Liberal Fascism. If they had, they would know that it isn't actually liberalism alone that Golberg suggests shares an intellectual ancestry with fascism. He notes that modern conservatism shares much of the same ancestry.

In one of the concluding chapters of the book, Goldberg explains how many popular movies have distinct fascist undertones.

Oddly enough, one of the movies Goldberg examines is more popular among conservatives than it is among liberals.

That movie is Dirty Harry.

In the film, Clint Eastwood plays one of his signature roles: Police Inspector Harry Callahan. A detective with the LAPD, Callahan does more shooting than actual investigative work. Callahan is the prototypical supercop character, excessively resorting to deadly force at the drop of a hat.

In the course of foiling a bank robbery, Callahan explodes in violence, killing all but one of the perpetrators -- all of whom are black -- with his .44 magnum.

Callahan's style of justice is technically lawful, but only by merit of his possession of a police badge that he effectively treats as a license to kill. He's effectively forced to resort to such violence by a system that is corrupted by a weakness that prevents it from dealing effectively with criminals, particularly the Scorpio Killer (Andrew Robinson).

He exhibits no hesitation in resorting to such violence. There's a nihilism at the very core of his actions that exhibits a "will to power". In this case, Callahan siezes for himself the power to transform the society in which he lives through violence far beyond any reasonable mandate his badge may afford him.

Of course, whatever fascist overtones appear in the film are not intentional.

"I don't think Dirty Harry was a fascist picture at all," Eastwood said in an interview for Playboy Magazine. "It's just the story of one frustrated police officer in a frustrating situation on one particular case. I think that's why police officers were attracted to the film. Most of the films that were coming out at that time, in 1972, were extremely anti-cop. They were about the cop on the take, you know. And this was a film that showed the frustrations of the job, but at the same time, it wasn't a glorification of police work."

However, in a sense it could be considered the corruption of that system that often made the kind of violence Callahan engages in at least seem necessary. The corruption of law enforcement breeds a weakness into a society that leaves it vulnerable to the lawless.

A key tenet of any fascist argument is that the social system in question has been corrupted, and rendered weak and impotent, and must be replaced. Fascists argue that not only violence an acceptable means of replacing that corrupted system, but a necessary means.

Certainly, few would expect such a critique of such a film as Dirty Harry to be found within Jonah Goldberg's work. The question that quickly emerges is this: will Goldberg receive credit for this kind of honesty from those who are bound and determined to discredit his work through ridicule alone?

The Modus Operandi of the Living Dead, Redux

Or, explaining intellectualism to people too lazy to be intellectuals

Readers of the Nexus will by now be familiar with Enormous Thriving Plants' Audrey, and her numerous ill-avised attempts to declare the death of intellectual conservatism.

Well, Audrey is at it once again. This time her complaint is about a Jonah Goldberg op/ed column "defending" Glenn Beck.

In the column, Goldberg simply posits that Beck is a conservative alternative to left-wing figures like Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken and Keith Olbermann -- the last of whom he says "pretends he's Edward R Murrow reincarnated when he's really Al Franken with more important hair". He notes that the critical response to Beck is one that has been repeated over and over again.

Goldberg's argument is, indeed, that Beck has made conservatism more accessible and less pretentious than individuals like William F Buckey ever could.

But he also notes that Beck has been extremely successful in promoting serious works of conservative intellectualism (Audrey goes so far as to surround "serious works" with quotation marks).

Audrey concludes with a less-than-austere plea: "Please, Jonah... continue to join Beck, Palin, Meghan McCain, and Joe the Plumber in the ongoing effort at making conservatism 'more accessible'. If only Buckley were still alive to witness the 'intellectualism' of it all."

Interestingly enough, even Goldberg himself notes that many of the criticisms raised against Beck are valid -- and they most certainly are.

The problem for individuals like Audrey is that they advance their arguments -- in this case, trying to further an argument that conservative intellectualism is a spent force -- under the guise of intellectualism while acting in a manner that strongly suggests that they have no clue what intellectualism is, much less are they prepared to engage in it.

Intellectualism works rather simply: one fashions an argument, makes their argument, and then defends it against the counter-arguments of those who disagree.

It's become utterly obvious that people like Audrey disagree with the arguments of people like Goldberg, but the problem for them is (oddly enough) one well described by this particular commentator (who mostly speaks in words small enough that Audrey can understand them):

"If you don't like something, you say that it sucks, then you make a buncha more things against it.

But the thing is, half of these people who are against it aren't making anything. All they're doing is posting TinyURL links to child pornography, and they're, uh, you know, writing 'desu desu desu desu' a lot. And I tell ya, I've been doing that stuff for years and it is entertaining, but don't expect your opinion to be taken [to be] any more valuable than mine."

It's a sad statement on the level of Audrey's intellectual skill when her folly can be so easily be revealled by an online miscreant in a Guy Fawkes mask.

But few people have ever described the level of discourse that emanates from Enormous Thriving Plants -- and from the vast majority of her blogging compatriots in the Hateful Left -- better.

So while Audrey can run down the works of Jonah Goldberg to her heart's content, she cannot escape from the reality that at least Goldberg has produced an argument, while Audrey hasn't.

Certainly, she can offer the political blogging equivalent of "desu desu desu" to her heart's content. But until she can offer a cogent argument in response to Goldberg's work, at what point does she honestly expect her opinion to be taken to be more valuable than his? Or, for that point, anyone else's?

No one can stop Audrey from offering snickers in response to the works of conservative intellectuals. But seeing as how laughter is not, in itself, an argument, that would still leave Audrey's own brand of intellectualism (un)dead in the water.

The Modus Operandi of the Living Dead

Coming from someone who likes to toss about examples of right-wing self-unawareness and conservative lack of self-awarness, one has to wonder if Enormous Thriving Plants is an ironic exercize in that very same zombie-like lack of self-awareness.

In her ideologically-motivated quest to prove the alleged death of conservative intellectualism, Audrey has dug up an interesting piece of minutiae: a Jonah Goldberg blogpost on NRO musing about differing strategies to survive a Zombie apocalypse.

In the post, Goldberg dicusses some amusing email conversations he's had about the notion of a zombie apocalypse, and how best to survive. Apparently, Goldberg thinks the best way to survive a zombie apocalypse is to hide out on a boat.

The post reveals precisely how much thought certain groups of people have put into the idea of zombie apocalypse preparedness.

More than anything, Goldberg's post is clearly a light-hearted jab at something that has become something of a pop cultural obsession -- the rapidly-proliferating crop of books, video games and movies on the subject address topics as diverse as biological warfare (Resident Evil) to a zombie Eddie Van Halen (Zombieland).

But for Audrey, the matter really seems to be finding something that she desperately wants to find. Considering the width and breadth of her quest to declare conservative intellectualism dead, it isn't terribly surprising that Audrey would attempt to conflate a facetious fluff bit into a full-time intellectual preoccupation.

After all, it's what individuals like Audrey do. It's their modus operandi: zeroing in on marginal thoughts, traits or individuals, and attempting to treat them as representative as the conservative intellectual whole.

This is seen in the effort to use individual racist expression to attempt to "prove" that all of those opposing Barack Obama's health care reforms are racist, inflate the importance of fringe lunatics, or attempt to discredit Meghan McCain with her cleavage or taste in entertainment.

It quickly becomes apparent what the true project of Audrey's blog is: the refinement of the ad hominem attack against conservatism in general, and declarations that conservative intellectualism is dead merely a prematurely-played endgame.

It would be an amusing enough shtick if there were anything original about it. But that entire modus operandi has been ripped off from another group of fringe lunatics, going to show that, much like the undead, the virus of intellectual vapidity spreads far too quickly to be contained.

This, amusingly enough, has become the state of the left-right intellectual discourse as Audrey and her cohorts have come to see it: that the matter of the debate has no longer become about ideas, but rather the attempts of individuals on either side of the "debate" to try to prove that the ideas of the other side simply aren't worth rebutting.

What else should one think of the insistence that the ideas of Jonah Goldberg prove the death of conservative intellectualism in lieu of any attempt to actually refute them? What else should one of think of the claim that Meghan McCain's breasts or taste in music and movies renders her intellectually unthreatening?

Then again, perhaps this is giving individuals like Audrey far too much credit. Even as they attempt to cherry-pick examples of the death of conservative intellectualism -- a task rendered all the more quaint by their evident inability to even define the term "intellectualism" in anything but a self-serving manner -- Audrey herself can only seem to do so in posts of one sentence or paragraph at a time.

This is what has rendered Audrey's intellectual endgame so premature: if anyone had sufficient credibility to declare conservative intellectualism dead, one would have to imagine that person would have to be more accomplished and significant than the author of a blog that itself is less an intellectual opus and more a collection of invective-riddled thought fragments -- a blog that sounds much less like The Shock Doctrine (itself produced by a troubled example of left-wing intellectualism) and more like the banal moaning of the living dead.

Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth, Interrupted

Reports of the demise of conservative intellectualism greatly exaggerated

As one delves deeper and deeper into the depths of Canada's ideological extreme left, one thing becomes immediately clear: these people hate conservatives with the kind of passion that would seduce the most devout nun.

But perhaps even more than they hate conservatives, they hate conservatism.

These particular individuals despise conservatism and its every trace and vestige as an obstacle to their extreme left-wing agenda.

It's one of the reasons why they're so eager to declare intellectual conservatism to be dead. In stylings befitting of the typically vapid etchings posted at Enormous Thriving Plants, that blog's proprietor recently insisted that Jonah Goldberg somehow stands as evidence that conservatism, as an intellectual force, is dying:

"Living illustration of the death of conservative intellectualism...

...is 'unconcerned' about the death of conservative intellectualism.

Goldberg seems blissfully unaware of the history of the machiavellian employment of populism to 'smash through the gates'. How ironic, given the subject matter of his last populist-oriented work.It was nice, however, of Jonah to admit that the rejection of integrity and intellectual appeal in favour of an ends-justify-the-means pursuit of populism has been a deliberate and conscious choice amongst some on the US political right.

...Gotta love the conservative penchant for self-infliction of wounds. Not to fret,though Conservative intellectuals: there's always Meghan McCain and Sarah Palin to save the future of the ideology!"

Certainly, one imagines that Audrey would like to believe that intellectual conservatism is dead. And so long as Audrey is willing to take her insistence that Goldberg is the embodiment of its death on her own say-so, one may even accept this to be the case.

But Audrey -- who frequently insists that "reality has a liberal bias" (which basically shows us that she has yet to realize that reality, by its very nature, is unbiased) is moving much too quickly to gloat over the grave of intellectual conservatism. If she were to take off the blinders she has so eagerly donned -- and stop insisting that others wear them as well -- she would quickly realize this.

Audrey's announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism is one made by many denizens of the far left, and as Goldberg helps to point out, it stems from the left's refusal to acknowledge intellectual conservative thinkers until after their passing.

Barry Goldwater, William F Buckley Jr, Ronald Reagan and Irving Kristol were despised by the left during their lifetimes. Its only now that they're dead that they're given their intellectual due.

Likewise -- particularly north of the 49th parallel -- thinkers like Tom Flanagan, Preston Manning, Adam Daifallah and Tasha Kheiriddin, among others, are particularly despised by the political left.

David Frum is a Canadian conservative thinker particularly detested on both sides of the border.

At the end of the day it becomes entirely evident that the preening announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism made by people like Audrey are based on two things: waiting until after the death of a conservative thinker to recognize their prowess, and lowest-common-denominator denunciations of fringe movements like conservapedia and various right-wing bloggers who don't in any sense represent conservative intellectualism.

It's a pronouncement made of equal parts cherry-picking and self-fulfilling prophecy -- moreover, a prophecy that is self-fulfilling by design.

It's only someone deeply invested in their own artificial sense of intellectual superiority who could pretend that intellectual conservatism is dead even while Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry emerges hot on the heels of Barry Cooper's It's the Regime, Stupid.

One shouldn't expect Audrey to forgive conservatives if they decline to wail and gnash their teeth over the alleged death of intellectual conservatism.

Intellectual conservatives know full well that it's alive and well -- even if one can fully expect Audrey to never, ever admit it.